How to Make a Video Chat App: 2025 Roadmap

The decision to build your own video chat app is a smart move to enter a high-demand market, as an increasing number of everyday activities, from education to work, are now conducted online. Besides, you may try to provide users with a unique video chat solution that will respond to their primary pain points like inconsistent video and audio quality, poor interoperability, security concerns, etc.

In this post, you’ll learn essential steps on how to develop a video calling app, key functionality to include, video chat app cost, and ways to start effectively generating revenue.

A video chat app allows you as a business to create a smooth, user-friendly platform that simplifies communication and drives growth while building stronger brand loyalty. The app requires robust video chat capabilities, and depending on your target audience, the app can vary in features. Whether for business, education, or personal use, it’s essential to ensure seamless communication, high-quality streaming, and an engaging user experience.

If you’re reading this, you’re already motivated to develop a video chat app, and likely have solid reasons for it. However, we’d like to take a moment to highlight the key benefits of building a video calling solution and why it’s a valuable investment.

According to Statista, in 2024, the penetration rate of video conferencing software was around 66%, indicating widespread adoption across various sectors. Healthcare practices, remote workers, and online education heavily rely on video chatting solutions daily. By developing your own video chat app, you’re not just following a trend – you’re stepping into a high-growth market, receiving endless opportunities. A well-built solution can set your business apart, attract new users, and give you a significant competitive advantage.

A video calling app development can become a revenue-generating asset. Generally, Market and Market states that the global video conferencing market is expected to grow to USD 19.1 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 12.6%. This indicates consistent demand growth, meaning that by investing in video chat apps, you can expect a rising user base, increased adoption, and scalable monetization opportunities. You can choose a business model that works for you, whether it's subscriptions, pay-per-use features, enterprise licensing, or premium add-ons. Unlike third-party platforms that take a cut, owning your own app gives you full control over monetization and long-term profitability.

Using third-party video chat solutions limits your flexibility. By building a video chat application, you control everything – branding, features, security, as well as the depth and quality of the chat experience. You can build a chat solution tailored to your needs, ensuring seamless audio and video communication. Unlike generic options, a chat app from scratch may offer unique features, enabling smooth communication over video takes place. You can also design an app and website to work together, allowing app users to interact effortlessly.

Additionally, developing an app like WhatsApp ensures full control over chat and messaging while letting you add voice and video capabilities. With a custom messaging app development approach, you can optimize the planned video calling features, enhance security, and allow the app to integrate seamlessly with other systems—embedding capabilities into your app that truly align with your vision.

As you learned before, you can go two ways when deciding to build a video calling app – developing it from scratch or using ready-made solutions. Let’s define the key differences between these approaches and define what will go along with your business needs.

Using a video chat API involves integrating an external service that provides pre-built video communication functionalities into your app. By leveraging APIs, developers can easily embed video, voice, and chat capabilities into your application without designing these features from the ground up. This approach streamlines video chat app development, ensures stability, and reduces the complexity of maintaining infrastructure.

However, by utilizing off-the-shelf solutions, there is a particular risk of lacking scalability and flexibility in the future. Besides, since these solutions are regularly updated by providers, businesses have little control over changes, which usually leads to compatibility issues or forced adjustments. While you eliminate the need to maintain complex infrastructure, reliance on third-party services can result in limitations in customization, potential vendor lock-in, and unpredictable long-term costs.

Let’s sum up the pros and cons of using video chat app APIs:

Pros:

• Faster implementation: Quickly integrate video chat functionality without building from scratch.
• Lower development costs: Saves resources by avoiding the need for custom infrastructure.
• Reliable technology: Reliable well-maintained solutions with ongoing improvements.

Cons:

• Limited customization options: Restricted ability to modify features to fit specific needs.
• Dependency on third-party services: Reliance on external providers for performance.
• Scalability issues with high usage: Struggle to handle growing user demands efficiently.
• Costs may increase with traffic: Pricing rises as usage scales, impacting long-term expenses.

Building your own chat application as a custom video chat app means developing all necessary infrastructure and functionality from scratch. This approach provides complete flexibility in design and feature development, ensuring that your video communication service aligns with your unique requirements and user expectations.

A custom group video chat app allows businesses to build a sense of community and interaction among users while maintaining full control over UX, integrations, and scalability. While building a chat app from scratch demands a significant investment in resources and expertise, it ultimately helps to build a successful chat solution that is tailored to your unique needs, scalable, and future-proof.

Here are key aspects you’ll need to consider while choosing the path of a custom-made video chat app creation:

Pros:

• Full control over features: Ability to modify functionalities to match exact requirements.
• Tailored to your specific needs: Expand and optimize the system based on business growth.
• Ability to integrate with other app features: Ensure smooth interaction with existing workflows.
• No dependency: Maintain full ownership and control over infrastructure and updates.

Cons:

• Time-consuming development process: Building a video chat app from scratch requires complex backend development, real-time communication setup, and rigorous testing.
• Higher initial development costs: Requires investment in WebRTC or other real-time technologies, servers, and skilled developers experienced in video streaming.
• Ongoing maintenance and updates: Needs regular updates to ensure low latency, high-quality video, security patches, and compatibility with new devices and network conditions.

As a proficient software partner with successful cases of delivering video chatting solutions, we’ve compiled a list of 6 steps to simplify and structure the flow of how to make a video chat app.

Before going straight into the video chat app development process, take a moment to really think about who will be using it. Are they remote teams trying to collaborate efficiently, teachers looking to engage students, or friends catching up? Get to know their needs, pain points, and expectations. Examine what competitors like Zoom and Google Meet offer, then think about how you can do it better or differently. By understanding your audience and the market, you’ll be able to craft an app that not only stands out but truly serves your users, promoting stronger loyalty and engagement.

You’ll want a development team that truly understands the intricacies of real-time communication, like WebRTC and VoIP, and has a proven track record of delivering successful video chat solutions. Check out their portfolio and client reviews – especially for past video chat apps they've developed. Be persistent and ask about their approach to data security, scalability, and post-launch support.

Note: At Cleveroad, we work hard to facilitate our clients with smooth collaboration, provide robust tech expertise, and establish trust in data security. You can examine our portfolio and Clutch profile to check our qualifications, expertise, and extensive client reviews.

Even if it seems that your video chat app concept will perfectly work out, you can’t predict the smoothness of the development flow and how your users will perceive the final solution. In order to minimize potential risks, we recommend starting from Minimal Viable Product (MVP). This is a version of an app with only essential functionality that allows you to test it in a real-world environment. Besides, during selection of functionality to create a video chat app, your IT vendor will advise you on relevant functionality to include within your budget and desired timeline.

Essential features usually include high-quality video and audio calls, text chat, screen sharing, and end-to-end encryption. We’ll also overview more MVP features and take a look at advanced functionality in the section below. Prioritizing the right features will help you facilitate a quicker launch, gather feedback early, and offer video chat app refinement in future iterations.

Your partner will have to figure out what technologies and tools to use to align with your video chat app tech requirements. They’ll select the right stack, considering everything from real-time video processing to backend infrastructure. To give you an idea of what video chat app development technology stack will look like, here’s what we use at Cleveroad to create a video chat mobile app:

Now, it's time to bring your video chat app to life. At this stage, your IT vendor works closely with you, advising on the best approaches while actively building the app. They’ll focus on developing the front-end interface, setting up media servers, and integrating key features that make the app functional. Your vendor’s team will ensure smooth real-time video performance while UI/UX designers collaborate with you to create an intuitive, user-friendly experience. They’ll also implement critical security measures, like encryption, to protect user data.

At Cleveroad, we follow an Agile SDLC to make video chat app development fast and reliable. Our dedicated project managers ensure clear communication through real-time dashboards, scheduled meetings, sprint reviews, and regular status updates. We establish efficient communication channels before development begins, allowing for instant feedback and adjustments. Our team focuses on seamless performance, security, and scalability to provide a smooth user experience from day one. By sticking to agile principles, we keep clients informed and involved at every stage.

​​Once the app is developed, your QA team will ensure there are no lags, glitches, or security issues. The team will also test performance across different devices and networks. Running beta testing with real users is a great way to catch issues early. It's ready to be deployed after fixing your video chat app's problematic areas. But the work doesn’t stop there – after the launch, you can further cooperate with your IT vendor to facilitate ongoing updates and performance monitoring for the video calling app to make it run smoothly over time.

Functionality is a key thing that will impact the way your user base perceives your video chat app. Consequently, it’s important to put additional effort into relevant, convenient, and user friendly functionality planning. As we’ve already discussed, starting from the MVP version may help you and your development team construct the cortex of the video calling app and then proceed with layering more complex functionality in the future.

Below, you can examine the essential features to build a video calling app:

The registration may be optional for users, and you should think it out when finding out how to build video chat app. For example, Zoom doesn’t require you to register. You may write your name right before joining the conference. However, it’ll be convenient for occasional users only.

Repeated name requests will irritate constant users. That's why it’s obligatory to develop a registration feature for an engaging user experience. Also, registered users are more likely to enter your app again. Take care about logging in with third parties. Apple ID, Facebook Login and Google Sign-In will help you to implement this feature when you make a video call app.

It’s a vital feature you need to implement to create app with video chat successfully. Registered users need to manage their personal data. It’ll be names, e-mails, passwords, and so on for video call app development. If your solution offers subscription plans, you have to take care of payment details. Popular app platforms won’t let you use payment methods of your choice. You have to integrate in-app purchase tools so that customers will pay with credit cards via the platform's payment system.

You can’t create a video call app without calls obviously. Apart from video calls, the app should have voice calls. Thus, users will be able to keep in touch with people abroad. Foreign calls are expensive in terms of internet traffic, so in-app voice calls are a cheaper and more convenient alternative.

The video should be transmitted in at least HD quality, and the audio should be loud and clear. Of course, it’s not entirely in your hands, and quality depends on the bandwidth. Still, your responsibility is to optimize the real-time connection as best as possible when you decide on how to build a video calling app and bring the decisions to life.

One-to-one calls are good but not enough to create a video call app. Your users may want to organize group conferences, so let them do it. Depending on your audience, decide how many users per call should be supported.

If you’re aiming at businesses, support no less than 50 users. If your app is for everyday conversations with friends, 10 people per call will be enough. Moreover, when you decide how to create a video call app, develop some key features for conference hosts, like muting/unmuting users, inviting, and banning. But you have to mind an important thing. The more users you want to be in the conference, the harder it will be to build a logic for the app. Thus, the cost of app development will increase.

The user might be in an area with poor network coverage or busy in a meeting, making a video call inconvenient. That’s where text chat becomes essential. To add this feature to your video call app, you can use Twilio, a cross-platform SDK that provides components like user management and messaging. It works across multiple platforms, so it helps developers reduce development time.

This is the type of encryption where the devices of the recipient and sender are the final transfer point. The message is encrypted on the sender’s device and decrypted only on the recipient’s device. Nobody can read this message when it’s being sent. When you think about how to develop a video calling app and prepare feature list, add this one to ensure all conversations will be confidential.

Protocols like AES-256 and HMAC-SHA256 will help you to make a video chat app secure. They split the data into 256-bit long blocks. Then, these blocks are encrypted, transmitted to the destination point, and decrypted on the recipient's side.

You shouldn’t neglect this simple feature during video chat app development. The app will automatically notify users about new messages in the chat and missed calls, keep them informed about new updates and more. Third-party tools like Firebase Cloud Messaging or Apple Push Notification service will help you improve user engagement with minimum effort.

There are a couple of components that form a contact list. The first one is the search engine. Users should be able to find other people in the vastness of your app. It would be great if they could search both by nickname and real name.

Another component is integration with the user's phonebook. You can fill a contact list automatically by searching similar phone numbers in your system. However, make sure to ask permission to access the phonebook before using the numbers. Google Contacts API is the easiest way to import existing contacts into your app.

You may consider implementing more complex features initially or in the future perspective, depending on your current business needs or budget. Here’s key functionality that can deepen your video chat app’s users experience:

• AI-powered noise cancellation. Enhances audio clarity by filtering out background noise, ensuring crisp communication even in noisy environments. This feature improves call quality for remote teams, online classes, and customer support interactions.
• Virtual backgrounds and blur effects. Allows users to replace or blur their background using AI, enhancing privacy and professionalism during video calls without requiring a green screen.
• Real-time automatic subtitles. Uses AI-driven speech recognition to generate live captions, improving accessibility for hearing-impaired users and in multilingual conversations.
• Multi-device syncing. Ensures transitions between devices, allowing users to switch from desktop to mobile mid-call without disruptions, improving flexibility for professionals.

Without tech expertise in creating video chat solutions it may be challenging to properly put everything together. Here are some interesting tips we’ve figured out throughout our practice:

Off-the-shelf solutions might seem tempting, but they often come with limitations in scalability, customization, and security. Custom video calling app development ensures you get exactly what you need without unnecessary extras or restrictions, which actually may appear cheaper in the long run. Whether it's unique call moderation tools, AI-driven noise suppression, or specific integrations, a tailor-made approach lets you create a solution that fully aligns with your goals.

Your video-calling app needs to handle increasing traffic without performance issues, as this may cause downtime and issues with user retention. To handle this, you can choose a cloud-based infrastructure and microservices architecture, which can prevent bottlenecks as your user base grows. By planning for scalability early on, you avoid costly infrastructure overhauls later.

At Cleveroad, we use proven technologies like AWS, Kubernetes, and WebRTC to ensure real-time video calls run smoothly, even under high load. Besides, we uphold an AWS select tier partner status, proving our dedication to providing top-notch cloud services like cloud migration and engineering.

No one wants to struggle with a cluttered or confusing interface, especially in a video chat app where ease of use is critical. A clean UI keeps users engaged and reduces onboarding time. Focus on simple navigation with distinctive and minimalistic details, clear call controls, and smooth transitions.

Video chat apps handle sensitive information, so security should never be an afterthought. Otherwise, there is a chance of risking users' data security and confidentiality. At Cleveroad, we integrate advanced security measures, including end-to-end encryption, secure authentication, access controls, regular security audits, etc. Besides, we have hands-on experience dealing with essential legal requirements like HIPAA, GDPR, and we’re also certified with ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for security management, proving our services align with international security practices.

How to make a video calling app that earns money? Investors love products that already generate income, while you’ll need funds to continue with product development. There are six main ways to create your own video call app and effectively monetize it. Let’s go through all of them.

• In-app purchases. This monetization model implies that you provide basic features of your app for free, and sell access to premium content and functionality.
• In-app payment. Enabling your app for users to make Person-to-Person (P2P) transfers or pay for third-party services allows you to get revenue by charging a fee for each transaction.
• Chatbot integration. Reap revenue by simplifying the process of providing recommendations and enhancing conversions or Click Through Rate (CTR).
• Subscriptions. Here you offer weekly, monthly, or yearly subscriptions. You can provide the basic features for free but give access to the premium features only to your subscription buyers.
• Pay-per-download. Make your app pay-per-download to make a profit for each download.
• Pay-per-conversation. Companies like Zoom and Skype use this model. For some fees, users can add more participants to the conference, extend the call duration, or gain access to premium features like screen-sharing.

You can also combine several monetization models to make your video chat app more profitable or use any other strategy that seems appropriate to you. For example, here’s how leading video chat solutions on the market monetize their products:

The cost to make your own video chat app varies a lot due to numerous factors, including the chosen feature set, third-party integrations, platform of launch, etc. Apart from this, the complexity of the app, the development team’s location, and security requirements also play a significant role in determining the final price. How much does it cost to create a chatbot depends on its complexity, just like with video chat apps. A simple video chat app with basic features like one-on-one calls and messaging will cost significantly less than an enterprise-grade solution with group calls, screen sharing, AI-powered noise suppression, and end-to-end encryption.

On average, developing a video chat app from scratch can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $150,000+ depending on the scope of the project. An MVP with core features usually starts from $40,000 to $70,000, while a fully-featured app with high scalability and security can easily exceed $100,000+.

Below you can examine an approximate estimate that’ll reflect the pricing and timeline for video chat app development with essential functionality. Mind that this estimate includes development expenses only. To create an app with video chat, you will also need a team of designers, PMs, and other specialists who form the backbone of the development team. Their video chat app development services are priced separately and are not included in this estimate.

Cleveroad is a trusted software development partner with over 13 years of experience in delivering high-quality digital solutions. We have extensive expertise in social networking, media and entertainment software development, including video chat apps, ensuring secure, high-performance, and engaging user experiences. Our team is proficient in WebRTC, VoIP, RTMP, SIP, AI-driven video processing, cloud-based infrastructures (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), and scalable backend technologies.

We specialize in custom mobile and web development, legacy software modernization, managed IT services, IT consulting, UI/UX design, AI development, and Proof-of-Concept/MVP development, helping businesses build innovative and robust communication solutions.

Here what benefits you’ll receive by cooperating with Cleveroad:

• Experienced in-house team: A strong team of 280+ skilled engineers (75% senior and middle level) with a proven history of delivering 200+ successful software solutions across industries.
• Tailored solution design workshop: Here, we define your video chat app vision, explore optimal development strategies, and assess feasibility – at no initial cost.
• Seamless integrations: Expertise in integrating cloud services, APIs, secure payment gateways, advanced data analytics platforms, and industry-specific enterprise software.
• Robust project management: A dedicated Project Management Office (PMO) ensures structured execution, effective risk management, and on-time project delivery.
• Compliance with global security standards: Adherence to industry regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, and KYC to safeguard data and ensure legal compliance.

To represent our expertise, we’d like to present you with our vibrant case – Blockbuster – a versatile video-on-demand platform.

The goal of the project was to build a high-quality streaming service tailored for Nordic viewers. Blockbuster enables users to watch TV shows and movies across multiple platforms, including native iOS, Android, Android TV, and tvOS apps, along with a web version for seamless access.

Our team worked on enhancing the platform by redesigning the UI, developing a brand-new iOS app from scratch, reengineering the Android and Android TV apps, and partially migrating to GraphQL for improved data management.

The result was a clean, intuitive interface designed for effortless navigation, ensuring users can quickly find and engage with content. We also implemented a sophisticated filtering system, along with essential features like parental controls and a favorites list, enhancing personalization.

See what Henrick Loop, CTO of Blockbuster, says about collaborating with Cleveroad on developing a video-on-demand platform: