Looking to Develop Video Chat App Like Zoom? Here's the Ultimate Guide for Developing Video Conferencing App

Online meetings or video conferences are not new to the world. Many video calling Software was in use whenever required. Zoom is available on the mobile app or laptop of almost every working person.

This sudden rise in the use of video conferencing apps is because they are trying to adjust to new working conditions by modifying their operations and helping staff to work with their atmosphere, capacity and productivity from home. This is the way businesses are going to mitigate the impact of a covid outbreak on the business and to save people from the risk of getting infected.

A video conferencing Application like the Zoom video chat apps application helps the staff to communicate online and conduct virtual meetings/conferences when they are operating from home. Demand for video streaming app development has increased over a period of one year. The pandemic has been a challenge for almost all of us, but applications like these have helped businesses and individuals to overcome communication challenges. Some smart businesses have witnessed this sudden surge in the demand for applications like Zoom and are undertaking video conferencing app development to leverage this trend. If you are a business or an individual that wishes to build an application like Zoom, then this article will give you in-depth knowledge that will be enough for you to make informed decisions.

Everything You Should Know About Zoom

Video conferencing software is essential for any productive and successful team. Zoom and other video conferencing software allow people to connect in person, even if it isn't feasible to meet in person. This makes it easier to meet remotely, which is essential for users to feel connected and stay connected.

The number of Zoom users has increased rapidly this year, raising coronavirus concerns. The company added 2.22 million monthly active users monthly and 1.99 million. This article will cover all things Zoom, including how to subscribe, get started, and top tips for making the most of your Zoom experience.

What is Zoom?

 Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing application that can be used for both audio and video conferences. Additionally, it enables recording webinars, live chat, and meetings. 

According to our research, Zoom is the most popular video conferencing software for companies with fewer than five employees. It ranks second for companies with more than 500 employees, just behind Skype for Business. Zoom was used by more than half of the Fortune 500 organizations.

Zoom Meeting

What is a Zoom Meeting, and how does it work? Zoom Meetings are the core of Zoom. They allow co-located and remote meeting attendees to communicate seamlessly. You don't have to create a Zoom account to attend Zoom meetings. Remote candidates can also be interviewed or met with clients.

A Zoom Meeting is simply a video meeting hosted by Zoom. Participants can join in person via webcam, video conferencing camera, or phone. Here's a picture of my team and me participating in a Zoom Meeting. Even though we were all physically present, we occasionally used the conference rooms at our workplace to attend meetings. To offer an inclusive experience for all attendees, Zoom alternative is combined with Meeting Owl Pro in this instance. 

Zoom Room

Zoom Rooms are the hardware configuration that allows companies to launch Zoom Meetings directly from their conference rooms. Best Zoom Rooms allow users to launch and schedule Zoom Meetings from their conference rooms using a software-defined hardware system. Zoom Rooms are an extra subscription to Zoom and can be used by larger companies that host Zoom meetings on a regular schedule.

You will need the following to set up a Zoom Room:

• Zoom Meetings can be run on a computer that syncs with it
• Zoom Meetings attendees will receive a tablet to help launch their Zoom Meetings.
• A speaker, a camera, and a microphone
• Participants in remote meetings can be seen on one or two HDTV monitors

Two cables are needed: an Internet cable for hardwiring the connection and an HDMI cable for mirroring computer screens to your TV. Let's now understand Zoom and what it is. Now let's go through how to set it up.

Get Started with Zoom

Select the best plan for your team. Zoom offers four pricing tiers for your business subscription.

1. Zoom Free: This is the best choice if you are starting with Zoom or if you want to test it. Zoom's free version allows users to hold unlimited meetings. However, group meetings with multiple participants can only last 40 minutes.
2. Zoom Pro: This choice is best for small teams with at least one remote employee. It makes it possible for you to work together effectively no matter where the meeting is held. Per the meeting host, Zoom Pro costs $14.99 per month. This tier enables hosts to set personal meeting IDs to facilitate repeating Zoom meetings. Both on-site and cloud-based meeting recording are options. Group meetings can only last for 24 hours. 
3. Zoom Business: Zoom Business is for small and medium-sized businesses with multiple Zoom meeting hosts. This premium costs $19.99 a month for each meeting host and has intriguing features that let companies brand their Zoom meetings. It features vanity URLs, corporate branding, specialized support, and cloud-based transcripts of Zoom conference recordings. 
4. Zoom Enterprise: This tier offers unlimited cloud storage, a dedicated customer support manager, and discounts on Zoom Rooms and webinars for businesses with more than 1,000 employees. This Zoom tier costs $19.99/month/meeting host. 

How to Login in Zoom

• Zoom

 You can join and download Zoom to your computer after selecting the Zoom plan you want to use. Users will be invited to sign in for Zoom as one of your company's hosts if they are creating a free individual account or if their system administrator is creating a Pro, Enterprise, or Business account. 

You'll also need to download Zoom Rooms for Conference Room on your in-room computer and Zoom Room Controller for the tablet in your meeting space to set up a Zoom Room.

• Sync Zoom with your Calendar

You may then synchronize your calendars in both directions with Zoom using this. You will have the ability to add a Zoom Link to your calendar program, and the Zoom Meetings you have scheduled in the Zoom app will appear on your calendar. 

You can set up Zoom Rooms in your business so that employees can view which rooms are available for booking. You can also set up Zoom Rooms to show employees when meetings are due to begin.

• Set up a Zoom Meeting

You are now ready to use Zoom. You have two options: you can either schedule a Zoom meeting through your calendar client (as shown above), or you may use the Zoom app to schedule an appointment. You can either click "New Meeting" or "Schedule Meeting" to start a new Zoom meeting. The information about your meeting can then be modified. For instance, you may choose which calendar to sync, set up a meeting password, and arrange recurring appointments.

You can use Zoom meetings to do things like turn on your microphone and video conference settings, invite attendees, have group chats, record the session, and share your screen.

What is 'Zoom Bombing'?

When someone enters your Zoom session without your permission, it is known as "Zoom bombing." They enter the Zoom session to try and sabotage it. By activating Zoom's privacy settings, zoom bombing can be avoided.

Zoom Bombing: How to Avoid It

• For your Zoom Meeting, Create a Password

Click the Require meeting password checkbox when you create a meeting. This will allow you to enter a strong password to share with participants. To join the conference, participants will need to enter their password. Participants who do not have the password will be denied access to your meeting.

• You can take Advantage of the Waiting Area Function

The waiting area lets the meeting host control who can enter the meeting and when. Meeting hosts can accept participants one at a time or in groups. When logged into Zoom, click the Schedule icon to start a new conference. Select the Advanced Options tab to enable the waiting room and check the box next to it.

• Limit the Number of People who can Share your Screen

After your meeting has begun, click on the up arrow beside Share Screen and then click Advanced sharing options. What can you share? Select Only Host to ensure that the meeting host is the only one who can see their screen.

• Secure the Gathering

When in your meeting, click Manage Participants in the Zoom toolbar. On the right side of the screen, you should see a list of attendees for your appointment. Lock Meeting can be selected by clicking the More icon in the lower right corner. Any new attendees won't be able to join the meeting as a result, even if they know the password.

How Does a Video Conferencing Application Operate?

Let us understand the operations of any video conferencing Application with the example of Zoom. This application allows users to view high definition RingCentral video pro and sound. The app can handle up to 1000 participants in one meeting. Participants to the meeting across the world can join it without much ado just with the help of an app and internet connection. The app allows users other conveniences like turning off the sound/audio of the camera as and when they want. Sharing the screen of the computing device is also possible. All these features and more are provided to every participant of the meeting to offer maximum comfort. Here are a few of the features of the Zoom video conferencing Application that have helped in the rise of the application and its popularity:

Screen Sharing

In the traditional meeting for presentation setup, the concerned members are present in front of you and they can see your presentation. However, not that most of us are working from home and connecting to the parties across the globe, it is not possible to see the presentation in person. Zoom has provided a solution to this through its Screen Share feature. This enables participants of the meeting to share the screen of their computing device with all the participants of the meeting without a cost or making any infrastructural arrangements.

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Chat

Zoom offers an integrated chat feature using which all the participants of the meeting can converse with each other. They can communicate with individuals or message all the participants at the same time.

Mute Participants

During the online meeting, if the host feels that any participant is making too much noise or he/she can mute that participant/participants.

Virtual Hand-Raising

Just like in a traditional meeting or presentation setup, we raise a hand to excuse ourselves and express our opinion or raise a doubt, in the Zoom app participants can notify the speaker or the host of the meeting through a digital hand-raising icon. This makes conferencing apps like Zoom even more convenient and interactive. Plus, clutter in communication can be avoided by surpassing a scenario where multiple people are speaking at once.

Record Meetings

This is another unique feature offered by Zoom meeting that allows the host to record the meeting and upload it to the cloud or store it in the computing device. This recording can be shared with other participants too.

Encryption

As far as the security and privacy of the data or information shared during the Zoom meeting are concerned, the app protects it with an end-to-end encryption system in order to stop unauthorized access and prevent an unwanted person from joining the meeting. No one can join the meeting without the host's permission.

Polls

The host of the virtual meeting can conduct an online or virtual poll during the meeting to understand what the participants think about a particular matter. The host can gather their responses by conducting a poll and make decisions accordingly.

As a business that wishes to use video streaming app builder to develop applications like Zoom, you must be thinking that the app offers some amazing features. However, you should also pay attention to the cost of building such apps. The cost of undertaking a video streaming app development process depends on the features and functionalities you wish to offer in your application. On average, applications like Zoom can be developed at the cost present between $40,000 and $ 80,000. Plus, the video streaming app Builder you are using and the labor you have hired to complete the task also matters. This cost of labor will depend on the expertise of the labor and the location.

How Does Video Conferencing App Development Work?

Here are a few of the important steps that you should follow while undertaking Video conferencing app development:

Backend Development – Development in the backend is possible at the beginning of the app development process if the app is built on a server from scratch rather than leveraging ready to use technologies.

User Interface Design

The UI of the video streaming Software decodes the way your users will be treated by the app. Hence, it is important to build a robust and appealing UI of an intuitive nature.

Compatibility to iOS and Android

One of the best ways to boost your target market and reach a wider customer base is to develop an app that can run smoothly on both Android and iOS devices. Programming frameworks like Swift can help you or your team. Apart from the above, there are two more crucial parts of Zoom's technology stack: the cloud network and the video architecture.

The Cloud Network

Zoom video conferencing The application is closely monitored, controlled, and maintained by an expert team. The cloud network is a robust system of data centers that are interlinked via private connections. This robust connection network is supposed to offer global connectivity and help users across the world to communicate and interact with each other seamlessly. Zoom has more than 15 co-located data centers spread across the globe. This networking is expanding

Multimedia Routing

This means it is possible to deliver various video streams from meeting participants to the client’s device. This mitigates computing power needs and makes sure that highly scalable operations are possible. With multimedia routing, the application is able to handle 15x more participants than a regular MCU. Usually, MCU can support only up to 100 participants.

Multi-Bitrate Encoding

In Zoom, streaming can adjust itself to multiple resolutions. Hence, there is no need to encode and decode the streams for every point separately. This boosts scalability and performance. With this, Zoom can offer different levels of video quality depending on the device and network strength.

Read More: How To Build Live Video Streaming App Using Technology Stack?

The Video Architecture

Zoom phone architecture is optimized to manage dynamic video requirements. There are four important features that make Zoom stand out in the market on the basis of its back-end technology and cloud-native infrastructure:

Distributed Architecture

A decentralized approach is a key for Zoom. Its technological architecture allows Zoom meetings to be allocated across the data center network. This makes it smoother and easier for users to join meetings  via a private connection with the help of the closest data center. This adds to the platform's scalability and offers a reliable video chat application experience to up to 1000 participants of the same meeting.

Application Layer Quality of Service

Zoom uses a proactive application layer to optimize the audio-visual and screen-sharing experience as per the type of device and the present internet bandwidth. This helps in providing the best user experience across the networks.

What is the Reason Behind Zoom’s Recent Popularity?

There are many video streaming Software in the market. However, not every software is perfect to conduct group goto meetings that have a huge number of participants. While many other video streaming software supports a meeting of up to 10 participants, Zoom can deal with up to 1000 participants.

Yes, of course, there is no ‘one size fits all' solution to make sure that your video streaming Software works smoothly, but Zoom has done something which has broken all the market doubts. The app is capitalizing on the increasing demands of the market that is in dire need of a solution through which it can conduct day to day communication and meetings smoothly.

Smart, new and old businesses, along with start-ups and individual entrepreneurs, are inspired by this highly boosted demand for video conferencing applications and are looking at this as a credible investment opportunity. These businesses are keen to undertake video conferencing app development. So let us find out how to develop an app like Zoom.

Choose a Development or Application Platform

Even before the actual app development process starts, a business has to decide on the type of platform on which you wish to run the application. It helps in deciding the cost structure and required development tools, a time frame of the completion of the app, etc. Here, you have to ask yourself one important question, that is :

Do you want the application to run on laptops, smartphones, desktops or tablets? You can choose all these platforms and develop accordingly or you can choose one platform to host the application. You can decide the platform depending upon your objectives, business goals, target customer base, available budget, etc.

Native Apps

If you decide to go the native way, you can select the platform on which you can deploy the application. Usually, Android and iOS are backed by their own, distinct programming languages, Java and Swift/Objective-C, respectively. So the developer will have to develop a separate mobile app development for both iOS and Android platforms. The developers can also use a programming framework like React Native which can help in building apps that can run on Android and iOS devices, both.

Web-Based Apps

Developers usually think of building this kind of application first. These apps can be accessed through any device. Plus, there is no need to use an extra third-party tool. Use of programming languages like JS, HTML is possible. Building the video conferencing app is easier using web-based apps. If you wish to make your app that can rock both computers and laptop markets this is perfect.

On the other hand, if you wish to provide more scalability to your app and more power to run effectively on the respected platforms, native apps make more sense. These apps also support legacy devices.

Progressive Web App

This is a fairly new concept that is gaining popularity in the IT world. It is a perfect blend of the best of the features of web and native.

Determine Video Chat App Features for your App

Once you are done with deciding the target platform on which you want to run your application, the next obvious step is to make a list of features that you wish your app to offer. These features will be your USPs and will help you to attract the target customer and sustain in the market. Depending upon your budget and resources available at the disposal, you can add the following features to the video streaming Software.

Chat

Video concerning will be an incomplete experience for the users if they do not have any other way of communication attached to it. Hence, chat. Integrated can't feature will allow participants to talk to each other individually or to the group at once. Can't during the call is crucial for better communication.

Pre-Call Video Preview

Let the application users check the camera before they host or participate in the video call. Let them have an option of deciding whether to enable or disable the video if they wish so.

File-Sharing

Activities like conducting presentations or virtual background meetings or conferences usually require the host to share important files with others. The exchange of media files or online documents during the meeting or video adds to the convenience. All these exchanges and sharing of data must take place in a secure environment.

Multi-party Conference

Any video calling app like Zoom can be successful only if it can support more than two participants. A multi-party conference feature Developing such apps takes time and effort, but this feature has to be there as it is the heart and soul of the application.

Recording

Being able to record meetings during the ongoing video call app is important on many levels. If you wish to provide this feature to the users with the help of your video streaming Software, ensure that you offer a storage facility too. These recordings can be saved on the cloud or on computing devices too. However, while adding this feature to the application it is important that your development team pay extra attention to creating a secured environment to ensure users of complete safety of data and prevention of unwanted or ungranted access to any other party.

Desktop Sharing or Screen Sharing

Having a screen sharing feature is core functionality that comes in handy when users are participating in the meeting or a host is conducting a meeting from remote work locations and has to share the data on the screens during the ongoing meeting with the rest of the participants. Educational meetings or webex meetings with technical details sharing can leverage this feature.

Filters or Icons

If the video streaming software you are building is focused on supporting informal communication platforms, then having features like filters and emojis or icons is mandatory to keep users engaged and interested in the software. This tempts users to make more use of the application to communicate with others.

Read More: Why Should You Build Your Own Video Streaming App Like Netflix?

Whiteboard

If the education sector is the target, having a whiteboard feature assists the initiator/host/professor/teacher to conduct classes and share information in a graphic manner to make learning more entertaining, easy on the mind, and easy to grasp.

Mute Participants

When conducting an online meeting, the host cannot see all the participants in person, so it is important to ensure that the meeting takes place without clutter, noise, or unwanted communication and chit chat. To make this happen, the host is given a feature that can allow him to mute all, anyone, or a few specific participants, including himself.

Live Streaming

Live streaming on social media platforms is a growing trend. Using the live streaming option, users can stream live audio or ringcentral video form of communication or talks. If the software is being used for business purposes, then the user can stream conferences and meetings to a larger audience.

Virtual Hand-Raising

This is a perfect way of raising a doubt or expressing an opinion in a live meeting, especially when the participants are available in large numbers. It is the best way to let the host and others know that you wish to speak or convey your opinion on the ongoing discussion. This stops multiple participants from talking at the same time and creating clutter.

Polls

Using a video conferencing application, the host can create a poll to understand the opinions of the participants on a particular matter. Poll features help the host reach a collective consensus and make decisions accordingly.

Know the Technology Stack

Be it video conferencing app development, once you are done with the list of features and the platform of app deployment, it is time to think about the actual app development. So let us understand the development process.

Here are the Basic Steps that you Must Consider while Developing the Video Conferencing Application

Step 1 – Back-End Development

In order to develop a video conferencing application, you first need to determine how to create the required server part that can help in the proper functioning of the application. A ready to use BAAS can be helpful for some apps. However, videoconferencing applications are more complex, and you might need a robust toolkit to build your own server end-to-end. Back end activities must be performed accurately as they create the base on which the whole application operates.

Step 2 – UI/UX Design

Once the back end activities are successfully completed, designing is the next step. The design of the application has to be crisp, appealing, and user friendly. User interface and user experience play an important role here. The navigation used in the app must be simple and easy to understand and use. The user must quickly understand how the app works and start using it.

Development if a Video Conferencing Solution Application Might Cost you the Following

When it comes to estimating the cost of the application, factors like location, features, complexity, labor, the expertise of the team, its size, the number of hours spent in app development, the platform on which the application will run, etc. play an important role.

What Should a Team look like to Develop a Video Conferencing Application?

Your team must have a project manager, Android and iOS app developers, a UI/UX designer, a tester, etc. with prior experience of developing an app like Zoom.

How to Earn from Video Conferencing Software?

Businesses can earn from paid video calls, premium subscription, advertising, advanced features, etc.

How Do I Hire a Developer for a Video Chat App?

There are many ways of hiring developers for a video conferencing application. You can use platforms like LinkedIn, etc. 

Google Hangout

Google's best known messaging and video chat platform is called Google Hangouts. Consumers are the only ones who can use this service.

Google Meet

Previously known as Google Hangouts Meet, Google Meet Available in Google Workspace, it is Google's top video conferencing tool (formerly G Suite). There is a free version of Meet as well. While Meet enables more users, it operates similarly to Hangouts.

Google Hangout Chat

used to be called Google Chat. It is a premium team chat service provided by Google that is accessible through Google Workspace. If you already use Gmail and have a business email address, you can use Chat. In addition to threaded channels akin to Slack, the program allows direct chat similar to consumer Hangouts.

Google Duo

One-on-one video chats are available with Google Duo, the company's take on FaceTime, on computers and mobile devices.

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Final Words

Video streaming software can be used not only in the corporate setting but also by common individuals to stay connected to friends and family when geographical distance is present. Though the Zoom app has gained momentum in this pandemic, there is scope for other businesses to innovate and come up with a similar app with even better features and functionalities. Smart businesses across the world are finding a way to enter this market and leverage the present, growing demand.