If you need to allow your company’s specialists to communicate with each other or create a space for the secure transfer of confidential information, you should not use public messengers. It is rather difficult to simultaneously administer an unlimited number of groups in public messengers and control the composition of participants and information transmitted in groups.

In this case, messengers for business and open source projects will come to the rescue. If you have already studied them and realized that they are not suitable for you, the task can be solved in another way: the creation of a corporate messenger. And it’s not as difficult as it might seem.

Creating Your Messenger

Initially, the messenger consists of at least two applications: server and client. The application with which you usually interact (for example, WhatsApp or Telegram) is the client, and there is also the server software that powers the client. To make a corporate messenger, you also need to develop the client and server parts of the software.

The client can be in the form of: 

• a web application;
• a PC application;
• a mobile application. 

Modern technologies such as Portable Web Application (PWA) blur the lines between web and mobile applications, so we recommend starting with a web application. Moreover, many employees will want to use their messenger from a PC, because the web version can solve the problems of all groups of clients at the start, without getting involved in the long-term development of all types of applications for all popular OS.

The server part of the messenger is designed to process the entire flow of messages from all clients and work under heavy load conditions. Back-end deployments usually require more than just powerful servers, but cloud services.

Creating a Client for Smartphones

There are several basic theses:

• Android and iOS make it possible to create messenger applications independently for each platform (so-called native applications), as well as import, for example, a PWA or a hybrid application.
• When it comes to security, the native app development option is preferable. Complex patterns of authentication and confirmation that the message is read by the intended recipient cannot be implemented on PWAs.
• It is expensive to create messenger applications for each operating system. Therefore, if you plan to launch just a basic version of your messenger, it is still better to use hybrid technologies or even launch only the web version.

Before starting a project, you need to figure out whether you need to invest in the development of native messenger applications or you can launch the web version. This will greatly simplify work on your project.