This blog has been revised from an earlier version published in 2021.
Summary: In this post, we’ll walk you through the key steps involved in building a video chat app—from defining your feature set and choosing the right tech stack to integrating real-time communication functionality using SDKs and APIs.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The last decade has witnessed a growing trend in video chat app development, particularly among the business community. An ever-growing number of companies are integrating video calling functionality into their workplace communication platform as a way to connect remote employees, conduct business meetings with partners or vendors around the world, and communicate with customers, such as providing customer service via video.
Real-time video chat is applicable to a wide variety of use cases including online commerce, dating and online communities, finance and banking, e-learning, and healthcare. Noticeably the healthcare industry has widely adopted HIPAA compliant video conferencing and global healthcare trends like telemedicine, telepharmacy, and teletherapy rely heavily on this feature in their communication solutions.
While there are many video calling apps already on the market there are clear advantages to building your own. In particular, you can custom build your app to suit your specific business requirements and use cases. Rather than building from scratch, which is expensive and involves longer development time, the widespread availability of third-party APIs and SDKs offers a cost and time efficient option. Integrating third party software still allows you to customize your app as you wish, but without the headache of devoting enormous amounts of resources and money.
If you choose to go down the custom-build route there are still other important considerations to keep in mind, including your feature list, design, and technology.
Below is a brief outline of the process of video chat app development and some of the key decisions you need to make along the way.
1. Define Your Use Case and Target Audience
Before diving into development, it’s crucial to clearly define why you’re building a video chat app and who it’s for. Understanding your core use case and target audience will shape every decision—from feature selection to UI design and technical architecture. Here are some common use cases to consider:
Internal Team Collaboration
Many businesses use video chat to connect remote teams. Visual communication can enhance a sense of connection between colleagues, and powerful features like screen sharing greatly facilitate collaboration. Other key features might include group calls, integrations with tools like Slack or Google Calendar, and strong security for sensitive corporate data.
Target Audience: Startups, enterprises, and remote teams needing secure, real-time communication.
Customer Support and Engagement
Video calling can greatly enhance customer experience by adding a personal touch to support interactions, for example for a bank offering video KYC or an e-commerce store resolving a complaint face-to-face, Often, these apps would include call recording, CRM integration, and routing to available agents.
Target Audience: Businesses in retail, finance, or tech looking to improve customer service or sales.
Telehealth and Virtual Care
Healthcare providers are increasingly offering video consultations to patients. In this case, compliance with regulations like HIPAA is critical, and features like waiting rooms, appointment scheduling, and secure file sharing are essential.
Target Audience: Clinics, hospitals, mental health professionals, and digital health platforms.
Online Learning and Virtual Classrooms
Video chat is particularly useful for e-learning platforms to make possible live classes, tutoring sessions, or webinars. Features like breakout rooms, interactive whiteboards, and lecture recording are also useful.
Target Audience: Edtech startups, schools, tutors, and corporate training providers.
Social, Dating, and Community Apps
Video can enhance online social interactions for dating apps or a niche community platforms. These apps also benefit from features like private calls, moderation tools, and user matching.
Target Audience: Consumers looking for social connection, dating, or community interaction.
Financial and Legal Services
Video chat is increasingly used for consultations with lawyers, financial advisors, or mortgage brokers. These apps need strong security, compliance, and often identity verification features.
Target Audience: Legal tech, fintech platforms, and professional service firms offering remote consultations.
Learn more about – Top 10 Video Calling APIs: Exploring Benefits and Features
2. Must-Have Features for a Video Chat App
Once you’ve defined your use case and audience, it’s time to decide which features your video chat app needs. While your specific requirements may vary depending on your industry, certain core functionalities are considered essential for delivering a reliable and engaging user experience.
But there are also some advanced features that you might want to include to enhance your app’s appeal and create a richer user experience. Start off with a MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which is a list of minimal features needed to ensure a viable product. Then you can slowly add features depending on budget, resources, and user preferences.
Basic Features
1. One-on-One and Group Video Calls
At the heart of any video chat app is the ability to host real-time video calls. You will also need to consider what type of video chat you want to make available. Is your app designed for one-to-one chats, multi-party, or video streaming as this will impact the technology you employ and the cost.
2. Text Chat During Calls
Alongside the video calling functionality you might want to include the ability for users to chat. Messaging can enhance a video chat conversation, especially when sharing links, notes, or quick clarifications. Chat is also an attractive feature when there is poor internet connection or when video is not needed, communication can be continued by other means.
3. Screen Sharing
Screen sharing is indispensable for collaboration and support use cases, enabling users to demonstrate software, walk through documents, or troubleshoot in real-time.
4. Call Recording
Whether for compliance, documentation, or training purposes, offering users the ability to record video calls can be a major advantage. Just be sure to obtain user consent and follow relevant privacy regulations.
5. Push Notifications
Push notifications allow you to always stay in touch with your user even if they are off-line. Users will benefit as well – thanks to pushes, they can be alerted about incoming calls, messages, or meeting reminders—critical for keeping engagement high and ensuring users don’t miss important interactions.
6. User Registration and Profile Settings
Give your users a convenient way of registering on the app to get started in the service. They can manually complete a sign-up form or register via a popular social network. Once in, they need to be able to create a user profile where they can display basic information such as their name, photo, and a brief description. The video chat app should also provide an interface for managing account details and settings.
7. User Authentication and Access Control
Secure login mechanisms (e.g., OAuth, JWT, SSO) ensure that only authorized users can join a call or access features. For enterprise and healthcare apps, robust identity management is a must.
8. End-to-End Encryption
Protecting video and audio streams with encryption is essential, particularly for industries like healthcare, legal, or finance. Implementing encryption helps prevent data interception and builds trust with users.
Bonus features
To enhance the capabilities of your video chat application, consider adding additional features that will allow your app to stand out from your competitors.
- AI-powered transcription and meeting summaries – help users capture key takeaways and reduce the need for manual documentation.
- Waiting room with host approval -Let hosts control when participants can join the call, enhancing privacy and ensuring sessions don’t begin until the organizer is ready.
- Integration with CRM, EHR systems – Sync your video chat app with business-critical platforms like customer relationship management (CRM) tools or electronic health records (EHR) to streamline workflows and centralize data.
- Admin Panel and Moderation Tools – Especially for education, community, or social apps, give administrators the ability to manage users, mute participants, or remove disruptive users from a call.
- Call Scheduling and Calendar Integration – Make it easy for users to schedule meetings, view upcoming calls, and sync with third-party calendars like Google Calendar or Outlook.
Find out more about – AI Enhanced Video Chat App: Introducing AI Answer Assist by QuickBlox
3. Best Tech Stack for Your Video Chat App
Of course one of the biggest considerations when engaged in video chat development is determining the best technology stack to build your app with. To some extent, what technology you choose will depend on which features you’re choosing and who you are building for.
Programming Language
To ensure the widest accessibility for your video chatting app you want to ensure it’s compatibility with both the iOS and android mobile platform, as well as the web. Choose a programming language that allows you to build a cross-platform application, such as React Native or Flutter frameworks, or build natively to have the tightest integration with the iOS, Android, and web platforms.
Backend Development: WebRTC
Most video call applications are developed using WebRTC, which is an open-source project built and maintained by Google, Mozilla, Opera, and others. It allows you to build real-time communication software in your browser and is standardized at the W3C & IETF levels.
Your particular use case will determine how you configure this technology.
- Peer to Peer Connection (P2P)
WebRTC enables peer-to-peer communication between individuals or small groups of up to 4-5 users. Although signaling and a TURN server is used to initial a call, once a call is initiated there is a direct connection and a direct exchange of media (audio and video) and data between peers without the presence of a centralized server.
- Media Server Connection
If you are planning to have large group multi-party calls or simulcast, and/or wish to be able to record sessions and save data, you will need to add a media server. In this approach all communication goes via a centralized conference media server, which is part of WebRTC SFU technology.
Video Chat API and SDK
To develop the chatting functionality, you can use one of many ready-made solutions offering SDKs and APIs. This will save you money, and the time and effort of your development team.
Hosting Environment
There are two ways to develop and run a video call application using WebRTC: On-premise and using a CPaaS provider (Communication-Platform-as-a-Service).
- On-Premise
To deploy any software using the on-premise model, you will need your own physical servers. They can be located in your organization or you can rent a server in any data center. On-premise solutions are the most secure way to store data. You also can access any information you need, whenever you need. But with this set-up you are responsible for the continuous integrity of the servers, their maintenance and security. If you choose to have a video conferencing set-up you need to buy or rent additional hardware to include the media server itself and to configure it.
- CPaaS (Communication-Platform-as-a-Service)
Alternatively, a communication-platform-as-service provides you with its own infrastructure. Typically, it includes different software tools, APIs, sample code and other out-of-box solutions. It allows you to focus on app development without the hassle of setting up and maintaining your own infrastructure.
4. UI/UX Design Tips for Video Chat Apps
Once you have your features, you need to consider the design and workflow. A good application should have an attractive and intuitive user interface and user experience. Users shouldn’t need much time to understand how to perform the action they need.
Here are some pointers to put you on the right track:
- Prioritize Simplicity and Clarity – Keep the interface clean and intuitive. Users should be able to start or join a video call with just a click or two. Avoid cluttering the screen with too many buttons or options, especially during a live call.
- Design for Multiple Devices and Screen Sizes – Your app should work flawlessly across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Responsive design is crucial, particularly for group calls or screen sharing features that may require more screen real estate.
- Make Video the Focus – The video stream should be the visual centerpiece. Ensure that speaker views, gallery views, and screen sharing don’t compete with each other. Allow users to toggle between layouts as needed.
- Keep Call Controls Accessible but Unobtrusive – Buttons for muting, ending the call, turning off the camera, or switching views should be easy to access—but not in the way. Use auto-hide toolbars that appear on hover or tap to maintain focus on the video feed.
- Brand It Your Way – If you’re building a white-label or custom solution, align the design with your brand identity—colors, typography, logo placement, and even tone of messaging can reinforce brand trust.
6. Testing, Deployment & Post-Launch Considerations
Building your video chat app is only part of the journey. Before and after launch, there are key steps to ensure your app runs smoothly, securely, and meets user expectations.
Testing Your App
Before release, thoroughly test for:
- Video & audio quality – Check clarity, sync, and latency across different network conditions.
- Cross-platform compatibility – Ensure seamless performance on iOS, Android, and web browsers.
- Security – Test for vulnerabilities, data encryption, and access control.
- Edge cases – Handle poor network conditions, call drop recovery, and device switching.
Deployment
When you’re ready to launch:
- Use scalable cloud hosting – Platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud help manage traffic spikes.
- Set up CI/CD pipelines – Automate testing and deployment for faster, safer updates.
- Enable monitoring tools – Use tools like Sentry, Prometheus, or New Relic to catch issues early.
Post-Launch Considerations
After going live, focus on continuous improvement:
- User feedback – Collect reviews and feature suggestions to guide future development.
- Performance monitoring – Track call quality, crash reports, and user engagement.
- Security updates – Regularly update SDKs and patch security vulnerabilities.
- Feature iteration – Add or refine features based on user demand and market trends.
- Scalability planning – Prepare infrastructure as your user base grows.
Conclusion: Using QuickBlox for Video App Development
Video chat is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity for modern communication, whether you’re facilitating business collaboration, virtual healthcare, online learning, or social interaction. However, developing a reliable and scalable video chat app from the ground up can be complex, time-consuming, and costly.
That’s where QuickBlox comes in.
QuickBlox offers powerful, ready-to-use video calling SDKs and APIs that allow you to integrate real-time communication into your app quickly and efficiently. Built on WebRTC technology, our solutions support iOS, Android, and web platforms—giving you the flexibility to create a truly cross-platform experience. For industries like healthcare, we also offer fully HIPAA-compliant video conferencing options.
Whether you’re enhancing an existing platform or building a new app from scratch, QuickBlox helps you save time, reduce development overhead, and launch with confidence.
Ready to add secure, high-quality video chat to your application? Contact us today to get started.
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4. FAQs
How much does it cost to develop a video chat app?
Costs can range from $20,000 to $100,000+ depending on features, platforms, design complexity, and whether you use third-party SDKs or build from scratch.
What is WebRTC and why is it important for video apps?
WebRTC is an open-source protocol that enables real-time video, audio, and data sharing in web and mobile apps without needing plugins—it’s the backbone of most modern video chat solutions.
How long does it take to build a video calling app?
Development time typically ranges from 2 to 6 months, depending on complexity, team size, and whether you’re using ready-made SDKs or building custom infrastructure.
Is it possible to integrate video chat into an existing app?
Absolutely. With the right SDK or API, you can embed video chat features into an existing mobile or web app without rebuilding the entire platform.
Is it better to build a video chat app from scratch or use an SDK?
Using a video call SDK like QuickBlox significantly reduces development time and cost while still allowing for customization and scalability.
