Building Encrypted Messaging App like WhatsApp: Features, Process, and Cost

Do you want to launch an app that could acquire more than 1 billion monthly active users worldwide in less than 8 years? If yes, then you should build an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp because this chat app has achieved immense success and popularity.

The popular chat app, WhatsApp, set new standards by leaving others behind. Ever since its launch, it has always grown higher and reached new milestones. As of May 2025, WhatsApp has surpassed 3 billion monthly active users. (Source: Tech Crunch)

The immense success of WhatsApp has shown the world how the best end to end encrypted messaging apps can become an important part of people’s lives. The continuous achievements of WhatsApp have inspired businesses to build encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and stand out in the market.

And if you are a startup or entrepreneur who wants to launch an app like WhatsApp, then you are at the right place. In this blog, we will explore the essential details about WhatsApp-like app development to help you replicate its success in today’s market. So, let’s jump right in:

Why Businesses Should Build Encrypted Messaging App Like WhatsApp?

In this digital era, people use encrypted messaging apps for work and make video or voice calls. So, businesses can invest in building messaging apps like WhatsApp to grow their business and reach new heights of success in this competitive industry. Here’s why businesses should build an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp:

1. Improved Customer Engagement

Building advanced apps like WhatsApp can engage more users or customers to connect the app globally. Also, including some interactive features like video or voice calls, text chats, personalized interactions, etc. can be helpful in engaging the users. So, ultimately, an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp can improve the user experience with powerful security measures.

2. Revenue Opportunities

A well-designed app like WhatsApp provides advanced revenue opportunities to grow businesses. These can include advertising, in-app purchases, subscription plans, transaction fees, delivery fees, etc. That’s why businesses can earn more revenue and grow their valuation. For example, LINE generated $16 million from in-app purchases, and Snapchat generated around $12.5 million in revenue.

3. Better Return On Investment

Every investor wants a better investment return whenever they invest their money in a project. Building chatting apps like WhatsApp gives you a better return on investment. So, you should make an encrypted messaging app because it’s a good investment and can help you succeed in the competitive market.

4. Texting Is Common

People now actually prefer messaging to other forms of communication. These instant messaging WhatsApp like apps help businesses drive higher engagement, more users, and a much quicker response time. Data shows that people open 90% of messages within three minutes.

While using encrypted messaging apps, people feel secure about their communication, and they talk openly to their friends, families, and other people. These apps also have the power to share media, voice calls, video calls, and other features. Another quality is that these apps are multilingual. With texting becoming common among people, businesses should make end to end encrypted messaging apps to achieve success.

Must-Have Features in an Encrypted Messaging App Like WhatsApp

Features are an important part of developing an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp. Every business owner wants to craft a product that stands out and drives business growth. Including essential features brings user engagement and customer satisfaction. Here are the necessary features that you should include to build the best end to end encrypted messaging app:

• User Profiles: This is the most essential feature, which allows users to register their profiles and change details like profile pictures, status, about, and personal information.
• End-to-End Encryption: This is a non-negotiable feature for encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp. Including end-to-end encryption ensures that messages are only visible to the sender and receiver.
• Secure User Authentication: Secure Authentication: Allowing users to strongly onboard and authenticate to prevent unauthorized access. You can use two-factor authentication (2FA) in your best encrypted message app like WhatsApp. To increase your app’s security, you can include phone/email verification, OTP login, and biometric options like Face ID or fingerprint.
• Real-Time Messaging: Users expect real-time delivery of messages while using another app like WhatsApp. It’s important to include typing indicators, read receipts, and message status.
• Voice and Video Calling: Secure audio and video calls are necessary now. You need to ensure that calls are encrypted and of high quality. Adding group calling features can increase user engagement.
• Media & File-Sharing: Allow users to send images, documents, videos, and voice messages. Keep shared files encrypted in transit and at rest. Adding file compression, media preview, and sync can give you a big advantage.
• Group Chats & Admin Controls: Group messaging is necessary for user engagement. Including admin features like adding/removing members, restricting replies, and broadcasting messages is essential to make the best messaging apps like WhatsApp.
• Status or Story Feature: This feature is used by social media apps, but it’s gaining popularity among encrypted message apps. Allow users to share quick updates in visual, text formats while using the best encrypted messaging app.
• Cloud Backup: Allow users to back up and restore their chats across devices securely. Backups should be encrypted to keep the data safe. Using in-app encrypted storage, Google Drive, and iCloud can help you.
• Multi-Device Support: Modern users want to access their chats from multiple devices, including mobile, desktop, tablet, or web, and that too in sync. Don’t compromise on end-to-end encryption.

How to Build an Encrypted Messaging App: Step-by-Step Process

After understanding the important details, it’s time to explore how to build a chat app like WhatsApp. Understanding the step-by-step process can help you building an app like WhatsApp, which is unique and seamless for users. So, let’s take a look at the complete process:

Step 1: Start With Ideation

When businesses decide to develop similar apps like WhatsApp, the first step is coming up with an idea. However, there’s no fixed path to find a concept or specific niche. You need to look for user issues or real-life problems that you can solve by using an app like WhatsApp for Android or iOS. This can help you get the idea. After that, cross-check the same and go to the second step of building the encrypted messaging app.

Step 2: Research The Market

Once you have the idea of building your mobile app, you should start doing the market research. While doing this step, you need to do some important things:

• Find the target audience
• Do competitor analysis
• Analyze the market
• Figure out market trends
• Do research on sales and marketing

You need to do the market research thoroughly to find out the pain points or problems of your target audience. Then, you can easily build the best app for encrypted messaging. Doing the market research can make a lot of things easier for you.

Read Also: An Overview of Social Media App Development Trends & Statistics

Step 3: Start Planning

Building end to end encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp is a complex process, but you should focus on creating a plan. At first, start by choosing the app platform. You need to decide to build encrypted messaging app for Android, iOS, or both.

And then, you need to choose the right tech stack to craft a seamless, encrypted messaging app. Once you conclude all the planning, you can hire a app developer or partner with companies. Don’t forget to make a plan about choosing the monetization strategies that suit your needs.

Step 4: Design The Application

Mobile app design is also an important element that you should consider while developing your mobile application. It’s the face of your app, and it should be clean, minimalistic, and unique to make an impact and engage users. Having a beautiful mobile app design helps in driving user retention, user engagement, and user satisfaction. Furthermore, you can talk to an ui ux design agency to build app like WhatsApp.

Step 5: App Development

Once you complete the design and choose one, you need to start the development process. It has most prominence while developing an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp. Businesses should focus on designing a minimalistic app design and then, comes the development phase to create a social media app, which includes front-end development and back-end development.

During the first part, the developers work on the client side and add functionality. But back-end development includes the work related to APIs, coding, and connecting the different components. While developing, you need to choose the right tech stack to build a seamless app. Making an informed decision can help you craft one of the best encrypted messaging apps.

Step 6: Testing To Make The App Bug-Free

After the development, the next step is testing your product. This process ensures your app is secure, bug-free, and smooth. The highly recommended thing for every business would be building an MVP instead of going all-in for a full-fledged application. WhatsApp was also launched as an MVP, which was designed to show whether a contact was busy or available. With an MVP, you can test your idea in the market, and you can follow the top 9 best ways for MVP testing. Also, testing the MVP can save your money and resources. So, you can be in a win-win situation after launching an MVP.

Step 7: Deployment On The App Stores

After building the app with one of the reliable mobile app development companies in India or any other region, you come to deploying the application on app stores. The process of launching depends on the earlier selection between the platform (iOS, Android, or both).  If you have built the best encrypted messaging app for iPhone, you can launch it on the Apple App Store. Otherwise, you can launch on the Play Store for Android users. Usually, the app takes 2 weeks to get approved.

Step 8: Gather Feedback From Users

After launching the application on app stores, you need to focus on gathering user feedback. You can stay ahead of the others by launching the app on time so that your target audience loves your encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp. Gathering user feedback will help you understand the needs of users accurately and work on that to satisfy their needs.

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How Does WhatsApp Make Money?

We have discussed the essential features and got the answer on how to build an app like WhatsApp. Now, it’s time to tell you how WhatsApp makes money to help you choose a monetization model for your new app like WhatsApp. Let’s start by taking you back to the history when WhatsApp cost $1 to download. While using this model, WhatsApp earned almost 700 million users worldwide. It was in 2016 that the chat app decided to end the era of subscriptions, and the app was made available for free use. There are estimates that WhatsApp’s revenue is at about $1.3 billion as of late 2024.

Now, let’s explore the monetization models used by this popular company to achieve success. Businesses, looking to build encrypted apps like WhatsApp, should keep an eye on these monetization models:

• WhatsApp Business API: This API is designed for medium to large enterprises that need to communicate with customers at scale. Unlike the WhatsApp Business app, the API is not free, and businesses need to pay on a conversation-based pricing model. While using this API, businesses need to pay a fee for every 24-hour communication session initiated by the user or the business. However, the pricing varies by country and type of conversation.
• Click-to-WhatsApp ads: The app indirectly monetizes through this on Facebook and Instagram. These are advertisements that businesses place on Meta platforms to encourage users to start a WhatsApp chat with them. However, WhatsApp doesn’t allow ads within the app, but Meta earns revenue from the money businesses spend on these click-to-chat ad campaigns.
• In-app payment: WhatsApp is experimenting with P2P (peer-to-peer) payments and merchant payments using UPI and Facebook Pay. However, sending money is free, but the company is planning to monetize merchant payments by charging businesses a small fee per transaction.

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How Much Does It Cost to Build an Encrypted Messaging App Like WhatsApp?

When you decide to build other apps like WhatsApp, you need to understand how much it cost to develop an app like WhatsApp. The average cost to develop a chat app like WhatsApp is between $20,000 to $200,000 or more, influenced by several important factors. However, this is just an estimation, and you need to identify the details and then partner with a mobile app development company or hire dedicated mobile app developers to know the actual cost. Let’s take a look at the factors influencing the WhatsApp-like app development cost.

Factors Affecting The Cost To Build Encrypted Messaging App

Building encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp requires a lot of money. The cost of building the application can be affected by a lot of factors, and businesses should know them to make a better plan and budget. Let’s explore them:

1. Features & Functionality

You need to pay attention to cost while integrating features in your encrypted messaging app for Android or iOS. Including features like end-to-end encryption, disappearing messages, file sharing, video calling, etc, can increase the app development cost. If you want to build the most secure encrypted messaging app, then you need to focus on including necessary security features to save your money.

2. Platform Choice

You need to decide while building encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp. You can prefer developing encrypted messaging apps for Android, iOS, or you can build apps for both platforms with cross-platform app development. It’s important to understand that you need to follow a multi-platform strategy to appear in the list of encrypted messaging apps that are famous. Also, this approach can save money for you, and you will get a wider audience reach.

3. UI/UX Design

UI/UX is one of the most important parts of a blog, and you need to focus on that to achieve success. Having user-friendly interfaces with intuitive design increases user retention but requires more effort from the teams. You can go with a sleek and smooth design from an affordable company to save money and build something impactful.

4. Maintenance & Updates

The app development doesn’t end at launching the application. You need to keep doing security updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements to stay relevant for a long time. That’s why the post-launch phase is also very important, so you should partner with a company that offers post-launch support; otherwise, you will end up spending a lot of money.

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Final Thoughts

This blog must have cleared all your doubts about building an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp. Building a chat app can help you establish a strong foothold in the industry by launching an advanced & robust application. However, this is a complex task, and businesses need to partner with a reliable social media app development company to build an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp. This partnership can help you replicate the success of WhatsApp and win people over. At RipenApps, we have an expert team of skilled individuals who understand business needs and deliver a great product.