With mobile messaging apps surpassing the traffic of social media, you can easily predict that mobile chat apps are the future of mobile and WhatsApp is leading the charts with 1000 Million daily active users all around the world! It has captured 34% market share of chat app market.  The app allows user to make free app to app voice calls, share text, image, audio, location & video and 70% of its total users are daily active users!  Let’s get cracking on how much does it cost to develop an app like what’s app!

Feature List of WhatsApp:

• Login/Register (Mobile number verification)
• Automatic sync of contacts from phone book, search, group creation and chat, individual chat, mute group, Broadcast
• Emoticons, sharing of image, video, location, contacts, audio, capture/record, audio note, sent/read tick in group and individual contacts both, thumbnail of sent image or video, last seen
• Set wallpaper, search for text in a chat, block, clear conversation, email conversation, add shortcut of contact
• Help, profile pic uploading, set status, network usage
• Privacy options: Last seen, Profile photo, Blocked list
• Pay for friend (email link, pay), change number, delete my account, network usage, tell a friend
• Chat settings: Enter is send(tap enter to go to new line or to send message), media auto download, font size
• Backup conversation, delete/clear/archive all conversations
• Notifications(contact and group): Play conversation tones, set notification tone, set default contact/group ringtone, vibrate, pop-up notification, Notification light
• Group admin can assign multiple admins. In a group when a member starts typing that should be shown, in an individual chat when a user starts typing it should be shown
• Trimming of videos
• Voice calling (Only one to one & not in group)

Some of the most critical functionalists of the app are:

• Mute group: In case of group chat, it is mostly loaded with lot of incoming messages between friends in a group. WhatsApp allows you to mute the chat groups for a certain period of time!
• XMPP server connectivity: It maintains a sticky service which will make a ping or call to the XMPP server on regular basis (some seconds) so that connectivity is not lost & user gets all messages in real time.
• Video trimming: By carefully identifying the frames by allowing the user to trim it and also compress it for faster delivery.
• Delivered & Seen status in chat : It manages “Delivered” status by getting XMPP receipt of message & for “Seen” status, we will send one message in the back end through XMPP and manage it.

Approximate Timeline for Development

Total timeto develop a similar app like WhatsApp on both iOS & Android platforms including the web services and  would be around 3 to 4 Months. For the detailed break up of time you can download our Analysis of Famous Appreport.

Approx. Price for Development

Price to develop a similar app like WhatsApp on iOS platform is approximate $26,400 (Twenty Six Thousand Four Hundred).

Price to develop a similar app like WhatsApp on Android platform is approximate $26,400 (Twenty Six Thousand Four Hundred).

Price of CMS and web services to develop a similar app like WhatsApp are approximate $16,800 (Sixteen Thousand Eight Hundred).

Total price to develop a similar app like WhatsApp on both iOS & Android platforms including the web services and CMS is approximate $69,600 (Sixty Nine Thousand Six Hundred) and the total delivery time would be around 3 to 4 Months.

Limitation of Research

This research is  the part our “Analysis of Famous App” research series the motive behind this series is to analyse the development cost and time frame particularly of popular apps is to serve potential app service seekers with accurate answers to their never-ending queries regarding app development.This information is the result of a thorough research conducted by the skilled developers of OpenXcell Technolabs. OpenXcell Technolabs has developed more than 500 apps till date. At OpenXcell we always follow the best practices of iOS & Android suggested by Apple & Google respectively. Hence, our years of experience have helped us to come up with this information that is solely based on our views, knowledge and research process. The Price shared in the document does not include any optimization & maintenance cost which WhatsApp procured after launch. It is just an initial cost to develop a similar app like WhatsApp having the same functionalities.