Chat is the norm now. When you build a marketplace, a healthcare app or a SaaS dashboard, people expect to message someone without leaving the app and when that feature is missing, they know it.
The shift has now put product teams into an old dilemma and raised a question of which is better: “Building a chat app infrastructure from scratch or buying an existing chat API”.
This post describes what it takes to build an in-house chat, the time and money it involves, what security work gets skipped and how it compares to buying a prebuilt chat solution.
What Building Chat In-House Actually Involves?
You must understand the scope before you can estimate the cost. It isn't just about writing a messaging UI, but building a real-time chat system underneath it as well.
