Self-hosted chat solution lets you take complete ownership of your data, security, and the hosting infrastructure of your messengers. This article will discuss the many other advantages of hosting your apps in-house!
The easiest way to build a white-label chat app is to choose business-ready chat solutions that can be customized as per your needs. In this article, we will discuss the reasons why you must choose a custom chat SDK to build your messaging apps.
Did You Know?
In a survey conducted by Cisco, almost 32% of the participants focus on the data policies of the app provider to ensure the privacy and security of the conversations.
This brings us to an understanding that the chat infrastructure must be robust and secure while being feature-rich at the same time. And the solution to this is – hosting your app in-house.
Table of Contents
What is a Self-Hosted Chat?
Self-hosted chat means that you can run the chat SDK on your own servers or on any server that you prefer. It is not necessary that you need to deploy the messaging SDK on the providers’ server infrastructure. Typically, this gives you complete ownership of the chat data and its security.
To understand this better, we will take a closer look into the chat SDK backend, how their components work, and the benefits they offer, in the sections below.
Understanding Chat Backend, Messaging SDK & Chat Server
- A Chat Backend is the functional backbone of a messaging system. It is software that lets you create your app’s server and is a complete file system that stores chat data. It also consists of the files, codes, and components to support the chat SDK implementation.
- A Chat SDK is a set of messaging features that can be added to the chat backend to make the app capable of sending and receiving messages.
- A Chat Server is the infrastructure where your app can get deployed, which makes chat live for your app users.
From building in-app chat to deploying them to the users, the following process takes place.
- You purchase a custom messaging SDK from a leading Chat SDK provider
- You add their API codes to the source code of your app
- The SDK is deployed on a server
The question arises as ‘where to host the chat SDK? ’. This gives a complete understanding of what a self-hosted chat is all about. Let’s look into the details.
Self-hosted Chat vs Third-party Hosting
Now, the chat SDK that you integrate into your chat backend can be hosted in two different ways:
Self-hosting:
Your messaging app’s chat backend creates an in-house server. If you host the chat SDK on the same instance where you have hosted your app, it is known as Self-hosted chat.
Third-party hosting:
Your Chat SDK provider or any third-party provider gives you a complete infrastructure to host your app on their servers, it is known as Third-party hosting.
Now that you’ve understood what this deployment, we’ll look into the benefits it offers.
Benefits Of Self-hosted Chat App
1. Complete Data Ownership
Since you host your chat on our own servers, it gives you complete control over the chat data. This gives you the freedom to enhance more security, features, and value to your app, as per your brand’s requirement.
2. Performance
Since your chat SDK and the app is hosted on the same server instance, it improves the performance of your chat 10x faster, drastically reducing the latency between users with the promise of a better user experience.
3. Data Security
The most compelling part of your chat on your own servers is that it gives your team a clear overview of the user logins. You own the authorization to restrict unwanted access or malicious entries into your chat app.
Every word and every chat typed in by a user will not leave your company’s database, preventing any potential threat to sensitive user information like name, contact info, address, and banking information.
4. User Experience
You can install white-label chat on your own computer, and its performance does not rely on your network quality or bandwidth. Also, you can ensure that the users get a reliable and faster chat, giving users a complete messaging experience without any intervention.
5. Hosting Flexibility
You can install your app and the SDK on a private cloud or hardware depending on your requirement. It is totally up to you to choose between an on-premise or on-cloud server, as per your requirements. In fact, choosing to host your chat on your own servers gives you a private space, with the freedom of storage.
6. Easy access to chat
One of the challenges of hosting a chat on a third-party server is that you may have trouble accessing your chat data, in case your provider is facing downtime. Whereas, you completely own a white-label chat, making it easy for you to access your chat data from anywhere, anytime.
7. Optimal Upgrades
Be it any kind of app, it is essential that you upgrade the features and functionalities from time to time to give users a modern messaging experience. When it comes to third-party hosting, your provider will give you general upgrades. On the other hand, our custom chat solution gives you the opportunity to upgrade the best features that are high-converting, while keeping the focus on the secondary features minimal.
Also, the need for an upgrade completely depends on the requirement and the stage of your app’s growth. When you opt for a cloud solution, this might not be under your control. Self-hosting gives you the flexibility to upgrade your chat at your own pace and then depending on the growth scale of your apps.
8. Industry Regulations
Your app can be built for only one country or for global use. Based on the location, your app must comply with privacy regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, CPRA, GLBA, or FERPA. A third-party provider may be certified for a few common ones. But when you choose to host a chat room on your own, you need not focus on the non-essential policies and choose to allocate your time and efforts to only the regulations that are necessary for your app.
9. Customization
With a self-hosted chat solution, you can easily personalize the features and functionalities of your chat app, as per your user demands. You can select which features to enable or disable and tailor them to suit your needs to meet specific business requirements.
10. Local Network Performance:
By hosting the chat solution on your own servers, you can leverage the benefits of a local network environment. This can drastically improve the performance of your apps and reduce the latency since the chat data doesn’t need to travel over the internet to a remote server.
3 Reasons To Choose MirrorFly Self-Hosted Chat Solution
As a leading in-app communication provider, MirrorFly provides both self-hosted and SaaS solutions to developers for building interactive video, voice, and chat apps.
Here are 3 reasons why you can consider MirrorFly as your chat solution provider:
100% customizable Chat SDK
Customizing video, voice, and chat are not where MirrorFly stops. It offers full-on ownership to you, with the flexibility to alter codes as per your preferences. Above this, hosting your app on your own premise gives you the freedom to choose how much data can be stored, the security layers of your chat, features to focus and relatively the look and feel of your app.
Complete White-label Chat Solution
Our white-label chat SDK lets you add your own logo, fonts and colors that completely belong to your brand. You can use our solution, but incorporate your brand elements wherever you need, without any limitations.
One-time License Cost
Get a lifetime license to MirrorFly Chat SDK by paying only a one-time fee. Instead of recurring payments, you can choose to purchase our license once and start using our features as much as you need.
And there’s more. Do visit our custom chat solution to learn more about our SDKs.
How To Get Started?
If you’ve decided to use MirrorFly’s customizable chat solution for your messaging platform, here is how you can get started:
- Hire a team of dedicated developers
- Build impressive chat apps with MirrorFly
- Customize as much as you need
- Deploy on the server you prefer
- Scale and grow your business
Conclusion
All things considered, the benefits of self-hosted chat are huge, and considering the solution for your messaging apps would be one of the wisest decisions you’ll ever make. In this regard, we’d like to know if you require more details about our white-label chat solution.
Post your queries in the comments or contact our team of experts today.
Frequently Asked Questions:
MirrorFly is the unique in-app chat provider with both SaaS and self-hosted business models. They provide complete ownership, a white-label solution, and on-premise hosting at a one-time licence fee with 24×7 tech support.
Yes, you can migrate from a cloud-based to a self-hosted chat without any data loss. Mirrorfly tech experts help you with data migration from another chat provider to MirrorFly or from the MirrorFly cloud to self-hosted with complete data.
Yes, MirrorFly’s self-hosted SDKs are 100% secure with end-to-end encryption and AES 128 security standards. Along with security, these SDKs are compatible with privacy regulation laws such as HIPAA, GDPR, and OWASP.
There are several advantages to using a self-hosted chat solution, such as complete ownership, limitless customization, a white-label solution, a one-time licence fee, on-cloud or on-premise hosting, custom security, and enterprise infrastructure.
I am looking for a white-label chat solution that can be used by our organization for remote learning. We need a clean LMS, that should suffice our needs.
I’m happy that you are keen on our white-label chat platform. Obviously, our pre-made chat API and SDK would be the best way to meet your needs for a learning management system because they are completely customizable and have over 150 chat, voice, and video features that are easy to integrate. Contact us to learn more about our solution and move forward.
Hii,
Thank u for your sharing I’m just curious to learn more about what is self-hosted and how does it support for business can you give some knowledge of it.
Good question from your end! To answer your question, a chat app works by creating web chat rooms that allow users to chat with each other in a hassle-free way. A chat app allows users to send and receive messages, calls, or video messages in real-time. If you wish to learn more about it, please talk to our experts.
Never saw such a detailed blog post. I liked the way that it is well-presented, but you missed the topic – What are the benefits of a self-hosted messaging app?
Hello Paulo! Thanks for such nice feedback on my article. Appreciate your comment and we apologize for not striking in us the benefits of a self-hosted messaging app. Well, we’ll do it now.
Some of the top benefits include complete customizations, getting complete data ownership, improved chat app performance, high and robust security, the option to build white-label chat apps, grants hosting flexibility, gives optimal upgrades, and easy access to your chat data.
Hi, I went through your blog post and found it to be very detailed and clearly explained. I wanted to know what is a Self-Hosted alternative to WhatsApp?
Thanks Glam, for your precious time to read my article and leave a comment. I am thrilled that you found my post to be informative and of help. And regarding your question, let me tell you that several self-hosted alternatives to WhatsApp are available in the market – Signal, Element, and Rocket.Chat, Matrix, and Zulip, to name a few.
Considering these, Mattermost is the best self-hosted WhatsApp alternative as it is free to use and comes as an open-source solution. Further, it gives to its users some of the prime features like encrypted group chats, instant messaging, customizable group chats, and more.
Hello, we are an e-learning company and we would like to make use of your group video call feature, and your group chat features. So i would like to know more about video chat sdks and apis.
Hello Hallie,
very glad that you are interested in our video calling SDKs for your project. All our video, voice, and chat SDKs are available for both web and mobile apps, along with offering 150+ high-end call features like single and group calls, language translation, presence indicators, call muting, besides low latency, high security, great scalability, and much more. Further, we also offer cloud and selfhosted solutions to host your apps as per your needs.
Can you tell me What is the main benefit of using chat applications?
Sure, You can talk to your customers in web chat rooms using a chat app. You can send and receive messages with it. Chatting apps are simple to use and make it faster, easier, and easier to connect with everyone. There are numerous varieties of chatting apps, each with its own format, design, and features.
hello team,
Can you explain me that what does self-hosted mean?
Hi,
Happy to hear your query, Self-hosted means running software or services on your own infrastructure or server, rather than relying on external or third-party hosting providers. there are many providers that afford self-hosted.
hey,
How easily can a self-hosted video calling solution be integrated with existing systems, applications, or websites to enhance user experience and workflow?
Hello Matric,
It depends on the specific solution and the compatibility of your infrastructure. It can range from relatively straightforward to complex, requiring custom development and configuration.
Hello,
Nice article team, In what ways does self-hosting empower businesses to adapt and customize their video chat solution to suit evolving business needs and changing technology landscapes?
Hello,
Thanks for your compliments, Self-hosting enables businesses to flexibly adapt and tailor their video chat solution to meet evolving business demands and shifting technology trends by providing complete software control.