Ask HN: Are there any full featured chat/messaging as a service solutions?

[alanz1223]

I am making a mobile app and want to have a chat/messaging feature where users can directly chat with me (in order for them to ask questions about a product) in real time. I would also like to have file exchange support (to send imgs, PDFs, etc) within the chat.. I know it maybe a stretch but are there are third party solutions that offer this feature?? So far the closest thing that is https://pusher.com/chatkit and they seem to offer a Rich Media Messaging feature to send files back and forth, my only problem is that they have a free plan and their next cheapest plan starts out at 500 bucks a month!

[adelowo]

Chatkit does exactly everything you want already and even more. Typing indicators,roles and permission ( you could use this to restrict only admins to adding and removing users in a group or deletion of messages).

While you say it is expensive:

- probably the easiest integration you'd find around around. Here is an example of what you described above https://pusher.com/tutorials/chat-app-react-native-gifted-ch... ( probably just 4 - 15 lines of code and you have real time chat, "who's typing" )

- it offers quite a ton of features you might be overlooking right now. An example is sending push notifications to offline users automatically - pricing is actually generous enough since you get a thousand unique users before paying $500/pm. Except your business is pretty large, you might not hitting that limit any time soon and at the time, you hit the limit, the prices might be justifiable - maybe

[desaideas]

Disclaimer: I work for Pusher.

Hi Alan, when we built Pusher Chatkit we took into consideration developers like you who are looking to introduce their first chat functionality into an app. As you noted we include a very generous free tier (1,000 Monthly Unique Identified Users, and all core features of our business plan) to cover implementing and scaling up a chat experience. It's good to note that users are only considered active if they have authenticated and established a session.

Use cases can be varied, so if you have something particular in mind where you need to scale more incrementally I would suggest reaching out to our sales team so we can find the right solution for you.

https://pusher.com/enterprise#sales-form-partial

You can also find tutorials on implementing Pusher Chatkit here: https://pusher.com/tutorials?q=chatkit