With remote interactions on the rise, in-app chat keeps users engaged without needing third-party apps. Chat APIs make it easy to add real-time chat across platforms, saving time and effort compared to building in-house.

What is a chat API?

A chat API is an application programming interface that provides access to a cloud-based infrastructure with the features to build real-time chat experiences that scale. Chat APIs are usually offered as a service and can be easily embedded in an application using a chatkit SDK (Software Development Kit).

In contrast to a messaging API, which focuses on SMS and MMS messaging, a chat API focuses entirely on providing features built on web-based instant messaging, such as HTTPS and other protocols. 

Often, chat APIs package messaging information in an easy-to-understand data format, like JSON payloads. This lets them work between platforms and allows developers to easily format chat information for end-users.

Additionally, the best chat APIs are just one part of a larger real-time communication platform. This means that the service you initially use for chat will facilitate expansion to new features, like push notifications, video calling, and chatbots.

Chat API use cases

A chat API opens the door to countless use cases that would otherwise take considerable engineering effort, time, and money to build out from scratch. At its heart, a chat API lets you easily bring live chat into your application, website, or game. In addition, a secure and HIPAA-compliant chat API, like PubNub, will let you build for sensitive situations where privacy is key. 

Chat gives your users a key communication channel and is a foundation for other product features and workflows that enhance user engagement. You can use chat to connect users rapidly, develop social element to your app, improve your UX with personalized communication, and more. Some standout examples include: 

Telemedicine chat

More patients and providers have adopted telemedicine this year than ever before. For example, in a single week, telemedicine app Doxy.me hosted treatment for 1.35 million patients using chat, voice, and video, with a peak of 600,000 daily remote medical consultations. For many, telemedicine has become a fact of life. 

For telemedicine apps to deliver quality remote care, they must provide communication channels that help patients feel comfortable and confident talking with their virtual care team. 

For teams developing telemedicine, a HIPAA-compliant chat APIs the basis of this seamless communication experience. It provides consistent, reliable, and secure communication and lets you deliver a refined user experience—without introducing regulatory or privacy risk to your application. This lets patients confidently engage in their care in ways that feel like the consumer applications they use every day. 

This comfort makes it more likely that patients will participate in care, better adhere to treatment, and have more positive outcomes overall. For providers, this efficacy of care means that doctors’ time is utilized efficiently, bringing down both up-front and long-term costs associated with ineffective care. 

Overall, chat for telemedicine creates a powerful foundation for open communication between patients and providers, paving the way for effective remote care. 

In-game chat

Multiplayer games rely on player engagement and retention. And social features, like chat, are a key element to retaining players. Players who are socially active and community-oriented are more likely to remain active in your game, bring in their friends and family, and commit to in-game purchases. 

Beyond engaging players individually, chat forms the basis of your entire player community. Without it, players will turn to external messaging apps to keep in touch, splitting your player base and causing you to lose out on valuable player data.

A chat API makes it easy to integrate chat into gameplay, and lets you focus instead on developing your game’s core differentiators. Plus, once you implement chat, you can expand it with exciting features like clans, tournaments, and festivals, which give players additional ways to get involved. 

Virtual live events

As events move online and turn to live-streaming to reach their audiences, it’s more important than ever to turn virtual live events into experiences that mirror the energy and engagement of in-person events. 

Chat that lives right alongside an event stream lets fans engage with family, friends, and other audience members in the full context of each moment. These spontaneous, real-time interactions, like chat, let audiences feel truly engaged in your event. When audiences are engaged, they’ll likely participate in your platform, interact with hosts, and return for future live streams and events. 

With live events, your entire audience takes part in the same moments at the same time. Beyond providing the tools to implement chat itself, a chat API like PubNub will help you accommodate massive concurrent audiences and will withstand the traffic spikes that naturally arise when you broadcast events. 

Multi user collaboration

Chat facilitates impactful collaboration where users can work together simultaneously in Virtual Spaces to increase productivity. 

Whether for remote team communication or online learning, a chat API gives multiple users the ability to collaborate in real time alongside shared documents, files, polls, and whiteboards. Additionally, a chat API allows developers to easily and quickly implement real-time collaboration without the burden of building from the ground up, enabling users to engage directly from within your application. 

Customer support chat

Live support chat can take many forms, from connecting with an agent via a web app to on-demand use cases like delivery or ride-sharing. No matter what form it takes, support chat is extremely beneficial. It helps customers resolve complex issues much faster than support docs, phone lines, or ticketing systems. 

Hearing directly from customers via chat gives you visibility into gaps in your service. And each chat conversation is an opportunity to engage customers, give them a positive experience, and build loyalty. 

A flexible chat API will let you deploy support chat regardless of your platform, whether that means web, native desktop, or mobile. A chat API that provides endpoints for third-party integrations will also let you easily build customer support chatbots that automate workflows and meet your precise needs.