Whatsapp is unarguably one of the most successful messaging apps out there. It hands out a lot of features that are easy to use to its users. With continuous new updates and bug fixes, it is only getting bigger and better.
There are many areas where Whatsapp has capitalized including instant messaging, voice calls, video calls, media share, and voice notes, to name a few. But there are a lot of other features, for example, easy sending on stickers and animated emoticons, effective in-chat mentions, or the maximum number of people you can add in a group, that are left to be explored.
You can make a WhatsApp Clone for the same or hire a WhatsApp business clone app development company to meet your needs. Let’s explore how.
What makes WhatsApp Superior?
WhatsApp has truly brought in a revolution in the texting world and was a huge upgrade from the whole SMS system. If you want to build a WhatsApp clone in 2022 or want a WhatsApp business clone app development company to do the same, you must know the strengths of WhatsApp, which you should also inculcate in your app. Here are some of them.
- Free Downloads: Whatsapp doesn’t need any money directly from you. The only charge you will be having is spending some of your data, and if you are connected to WiFi, that’s even better. There are no in-app purchases or extra charges. Just download the app and you’re ready to go!
- Instant and Unlimited Messaging: When you’re connected to a good Internet, you are all set to use WhatsApp. This was a huge shift from the population that had to use an SMS pack and were only given a limited number of messages per day. One could exhaust the number of messages they could send and now people had unlimited messages.
- Free Calling: Another feature that WhatsApp added was free voice calls and video calls, which truly attracted a lot of the population to use WhatsApp. Normal calling feature always brings a price tag with it and usually has a certain amount of money it costs per second. WhatsApp, with its free calls, induced people to do a WhatsApp call, especially when calling people who live in a different country as the international calls had their own extra charges. WhatsApp truly did connect the world.
- Easy Media Share: Sharing media over SMS was not easily possible, and still isn’t for some. WhatsApp with its option to share media easily or share videos made it easy for many people. Adding to that, the one view feature made a lot of people ensured their privacy. Plus, the option to upload pictures on your 24 hour status, something Instagram was doing, also interests a lot of folk.
There is a lot of improvement that you can do in this area though. Telegram, for example, has capitalized on it and has done many improvements to be a better option than WhatsApp in this area. The limitations of media sharing through WhatsApp are that you can not share more than 30 photos at a time, you can’t send a video exceeding the time frame of 90 seconds, and that Whatsapp damages the picture quality. Telegram doesn’t have any of these limitations.
- End to End Encryption: Privacy has been the concern of many while they share their personal and private messages through an app. The end-to-end encryption facility makes users feel secure and assured of the fact that no one, except the parties involved while texting, not even WhatsApp itself, could read any conversation happening.
- The First in the Game: One of the many reasons WhatsApp could make it big was because it was the first one in the market to take advantage of the lack of messaging features the common population had, the ones especially which did not have iMessage or the BBM messenger feature.
What Features should a WhatsApp Clone App have?
So, by now you must’ve understood what benefits building a WhatsApp clone app that includes at the least texting, calling, and sharing has. Let’s see how you can make one and what unique features it should have that give you an upper hand over WhatsApp.
- Having a web version of the app would be extremely helpful as WhatsApp currently lacks a bit in this area. This will make your users comfortable with operating the facility both on their laptops/desktops and on their phones. WhatsApp does have web versions, but you need to have an internet connection to your phone to access it. They have released their Beta version recently, which nullifies the need for that internet connection, but that is still in the works and is rather slow.
- People should be able to share huge files easily within a matter of seconds, or minutes for very huge files. WhatsApp usually has a size limit and very big files need a lot of time for sharing. The same goes for the aforementioned restrictions on sharing a given number of photos, a given length of the video, or for maintaining the quality of the file shared.
- An easy option to backup all your chats should be present automatically. You can do this by storing the chats into the google drive or iCloud drive of the user. This will help the user to have all their information intact when they switch phones or buy a new one. You can also include backup options when a number is changed (if providing your number is the way to register into your app) within the same account.
- You can include call spaces within group chats where participants can join the call whenever they want, can mute if they like, switch to video if they want to, and easily exit and re-enter the space whenever they want. This provides a way for users to virtually hang out on your app, something which is becoming very prevalent due to the pandemic,
- Obviously, all generic features like instant and unlimited texting, free calls, ability to make groups with many people/accounts added should be there.
These were some unique features you could include in your WhatsApp clone app or instruct the WhatsApp business clone app development company to do so. There are many upsides to building a WhatsApp clone and such an app will truly be scalable if it attracts the right users.
