Unlocking Educational Potential: The Best Free Chatting Apps of 2024 and the Power of Live Chat in Learning

In today’s times, “Studying Abroad” is extremely important to succeed in this competitive environment. If one wishes to prosper in one professional career in this ever-declining economy, then an “International Masters’ Degree” should be a must. Such schools provide top-notch education along with all-rounded extracurricular activities through their numerous clubs and societies.

Moreover, the daily schedule in such programs is a busy one. The students are ubiquitously exposed to a plethora of stressful yet evolving experiences. To streamline the process and thus reduce the turnaround time, something other than tangible interactions is required. Hence, several websites and applications can ease such interactions by onboarding such communication to online platforms. A plethora of such texting and messaging mediums helps maintain efficacious communication within and beyond the school’s campus.

The requirements to build a chat application

If you’ve geared up to build a chat app for your business, here is a quick checklist of the necessities you’ll require during the entire process:

• A dedicated In-house Coders Team 
• Development Know-hows
• Right Infrastructure 
• Capital Investment 
• Budget Plan 
• Security & Privacy Support
• Time for Development 
• Hosting facilities

Once you’ve ticked almost all the items on the checklist, we’ll proceed further with discussing the benefits of web and mobile chat apps.

Why should you build a chat application?

Building a chat application can offer various benefits depending on your goals and target audience:

1. Communication: A chat application facilitates real-time communication between users, whether it’s for personal, professional, or social purposes. It allows for quick exchange of messages, files, and multimedia content.
2. Collaboration: For businesses, a chat application can enhance collaboration among team members, enabling them to share ideas, coordinate tasks, and work together more efficiently, regardless of their location.
3. Customer Support: Chat applications can be integrated into customer support systems, providing users with instant assistance and improving customer satisfaction. Features like chatbots can automate responses to common queries, freeing up human agents for more complex issues.
4. Community Building: If you’re creating a social platform, a chat application can help foster a sense of community among users. It allows them to connect with like-minded individuals, join group conversations, and participate in discussions on topics of interest.
5. Personalization: By incorporating features like user profiles, status updates, and customizable notifications, you can tailor the chat experience to meet the preferences of your users, enhancing engagement and retention.
6. Data Insights: Analyzing user interactions within the chat application can provide valuable insights into user behaviour, preferences, and trends. This data can inform decision-making processes and help optimize the user experience.

Benefits of a Chatting App in an Educational Setting:-

•  These apps put an end to the need for telephonic conversation. This allows students to have long conversations with their loved ones without fretting about the hefty International Direct Dialing (IDD) charges.
•  This mode of communication also allows in keeping end-to-end communication between parents, teachers, and students. This eases the process of sending reminders and assignments to students. Moreover, teachers can send progress reports to parents and thus communicate with them regarding any event, field trip, or any to-be conferences.
• For group projects, the students can interact with their mentors and their teammates without a tangible interaction. This is extremely crucial in the present COVID-19 scenario, where social distancing is imperative to prevent any further outbreak.
• When in group projects, the students can instantly share instructions, documents, or presentations, which helps them manage their time efficiently. Moreover, one can engage in such interactions via cellular phones and can complete such tasks on the go.
• Chatting apps are helpful in the discussion of doubts during live online classes. This, in turn, helps maintain the virtual classroom’s decorum without students screaming and shouting at once.

Top 5 Free Chatting Apps for Students, Teachers, and Parents-:

1. Classing

This app facilitates smooth interaction between parents and teachers. The app’s primary purpose is to onboard the parents and draw them into their child’s classroom. This would further allow them to monitor their child’s overall development while being a million miles away from their kids. Over 450,000 students and parents have downloaded this app worldwide. This app caters to students right from their early schooling to their post-graduate study abroad.
Moreover, the app has garnered a PlayStore rating of 4.1, with over 60,000 positive reviews from delighted customers. A peculiar advantage that makes the application stand out from the rest is that anyone can connect with classes worldwide. This feature proves to be very instrumental in the pandemic situation.

2. Remind: School Communication

“Remind” is specifically designed for teachers and eases the process of reminding the students about pressing issues and deadlines. This in turn allows the students and parents to be up-to-speed and thus be wary of the present deliverables. All-in-all, the app has a user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) and is a highly effective chatting app that helps connect – families, students, and teachers.  Also, this app will allow you to translate 70+ languages; thus, easing interaction for international students.

3. WhatsApp Messenger

WhatsApp Messenger is a widely popular application in the public eye with the most simplified user interface comprising of almost every function required to make the experience better. The application allows real-time personalized messaging as well as video and photo sharing. Besides just messaging, you can also benefit from the “Telephonic Calling” and “Video Calling” features without incurring any tariff charges.

When in a rush, you can use the “Voice Note” feature, which allows one to send messages instantly via audio recordings. This ultimately saves time typing it out. One can also share their current/live location or their nearby locations with their contacts. This app is available for IOS and even for Android, on the Google PlayStore. With over 129 million downloads and a 4.2-star rating (for just Android users), the application dominates the market.

4. ClasstTag

This user-friendly application is also available for Android and iOS-operated products. It allows in maintaining a productive communication channel between teachers and parents to learn about their child’s progress. Furthermore, the teachers can also set business hours on this app.

This allows the teachers to maintain a healthy work-life balance and therefore not be bothered during off-office hours. Another added advantage would be that the teachers can add information about their professional experience. This app also allows automatic 2-way translation for international students and parents who might be new to the language.

5. Bloomz

Besides being a full-fledged chatting app installed with all the features required for efficient parent-teacher communication, the app allows one to schedule events and set reminders. Moreover, the teachers can also organize parent-teacher conferences with ease and update the parents regarding their child’s progress. Furthermore, through the app, students can share portfolios with their parents and the school team. The app can also serve as an excellent media-sharing platform, through which students can share classroom moments privately with parents.

The above-listed online applications are the need of the hour in such testing times. Moreover, they will also reduce the homesickness that international students face regularly. This will allow one to give unwavering focus to their academics.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Chat App

The development cost of a chatting app for educational purposes can vary based on several factors, including the complexity of features, technology stack, developer rates, and geographical location. Here’s a rough estimate of the development cost based on the country:

1. United States: Development rates in the US tend to be higher, ranging from $100 to $250 per hour for experienced developers. For a basic educational chat app, the cost can start from $20,000 and go up to $100,000 or more, depending on the features and customization required.
2. United Kingdom: Development rates in the UK are similar to those in the US, ranging from £80 to £200 per hour. The cost of developing an educational chat app can be comparable to that in the US, starting from £15,000 and going up to £75,000 or more.
3. India: Development rates in India are relatively lower, ranging from $25 to $80 per hour. Therefore, the cost of developing an educational chat app can be more affordable, starting from $5,000 and going up to $40,000 or more, depending on the requirements.
4. Eastern Europe (e.g., Ukraine, Poland): Development rates in Eastern European countries are moderate, ranging from $30 to $100 per hour. The cost of developing an educational chat app can be similar to that in India, starting from $6,000 and going up to $50,000 or more.

These estimates are rough and can vary significantly based on specific project requirements, such as the number of features, platform support (iOS, Android, web), integration with other systems, design complexity, and ongoing maintenance needs. It’s advisable to consult with software development companies or freelancers to get accurate quotes based on your project specifications.

However, in the end, it depends upon your personal choice of which application you wish to go for. You will get a plethora of features from the apps mentioned above to fulfil almost your every need. So, it depends on an individual how well they take advantage of such apps. This stands to be a good reason why these apps have such a massive customer base.