Tired of communicating with your friends and family using regular text messages, emails, and phone calls? Looking for a new chat app to try out? There are so many options for online chatting apps nowadays, and it can get overwhelming when you’re looking for the best one to use.
That’s where we come in! We’ve scoured the Internet for the best chat apps, and in this article we’re going to tell you about our favorites. Before we start talking about which ones we recommend, let’s go over some of the things that make a chat app great.
What should you look for in a messaging app?
When you’re looking for a messaging app to use, here are some of the things you should consider:
- Ease of Use – A good messaging app should be intuitive to the user, so look out for ones with simple menus and options that are easy to understand and navigate.
- Safety – You don’t want strangers being able to see your private conversations, do you? Most popular chat apps do have at least basic security features, but look for things like message encryption and password protection, just to be safe.
- Cost – There are a lot of great free chat apps out there, but there are some that cost money to download and use as well. How much are you willing to spend? Find one that suits your needs and your budget.
- In-app purchases – Some apps will try to trick you into thinking they’re free to use. The app may be free to download, but then you’ll find out that in order to use the service, you have to pay for it, or at least some aspects of it. Be wary of apps with in-app purchases.
- Number of users – If you’re going to use this app to communicate with others, there will need to be other users for you to chat with. Look for an app that you know some of your friends or family members are already using.
- Data usage – If you’re on the go most of the time, you’ll be using your cellular data when running a chat app on your mobile device. Look into how much data the app uses on average to make sure you won’t get hit with a surprisingly high cell phone bill.
Now that we’ve talked about some things to look for in a new messaging app, let’s talk about some of our favorite ones for both iOS and Android devices.
Best 6 Messaging Apps for iOS and Android
1. WeChat
WeChat is a free chat app that uses your device’s Internet connection to send and receive text, picture, audio, and video messages. You can even make calls to other WeChat users through the app! It has over 700 million users, so you’re quite likely to find some friends on there to talk to. The app is fairly simple and easy to use, but if you need a little help you can learn more with our WeChat course. Download WeChat for iPhone/iPad or Android.
Reason Why It’s One of the Best: Offers multiple ways to communicate.
2. WhatsApp
Our next recommendation is WhatsApp. This app is available on a huge variety of devices, including iPhone/iPad, Android, Windows Phones, and other mobile devices. If you have contacts saved to your phone who already use WhatsApp, it will be automatically detected, so you can easily add them all at once. WhatsApp is also great as a group chat app, and it allows you to send text, pictures, voice recordings, and videos.
You can also make free calls to your WhatsApp contacts, so you can save calling minutes on your phone. If you want to save your conversations, you can easily back them up to your device or to Google Drive, just in case something ever gets deleted by accident. Head over to our course on WhatsApp for some helpful articles and tutorials.
Reason Why It’s One of the Best: Automatically imports saved contacts
3. Snapchat
Snapchat is one of the more privacy-conscious messaging apps currently available. Anything you send through Snapchat is automatically deleted after being opened by the recipient. Snapchat makes it easy to add your contacts by allowing you to import contacts from your device, add people by their username, their Snap Code, or look for friends nearby. You can find our Snapchat course here if you’d like to learn how to use the app, and if you’d like to try out Snapchat, you can download it for your Android or iPhone/iPad.
Reason Why It’s One of the Best: Increased privacy with automatic deletion of messages.
4. Facebook Messenger
This social media website is immensely popular with over 1 billion users – you may even already have an account! This app by Facebook is called Facebook Messenger, and is another awesome free chat app. You can use it to chat with any of your Facebook friends though text, pictures, audio messages, videos, fun stickers, and more. You can make voice and video calls through the app, and even play games with your friends. You can create group chats with up to 150 people in them as well! Download and use Facebook Messenger on your iPhone/iPad or Android.
Reason Why It’s One of the Best: Most of your friends and family are likely already using it.
5. Kik
Number five on our list of great free chat apps is Kik. It’s completely free to use, and works on almost all mobile devices. Like most of the other apps we’ve mentioned, Kik offers plenty of ways to communicate with your contacts, including pictures and video, text messages, drawings, memes, emoticons and more. Even if none of your Kik friends are online, you can have a fun conversation or play a game with one of Kik’s automated “bots” – there are quite a few to choose from! Learn more with our Kik course here. Whether you have an Android smart phone or iPhone/iPad, you can download Kik for free!
Reason Why It’s One of the Best: Fun extra features like memes, GIFs and automated bots.
6. iMessage
Our last app recommendation is only available on Apple devices, but it’s still one of our favorites. iMessage comes built-in on iPhones, iPod touch, iPad, and Mac computers. It allows users to send messages to their contacts who also have Apple devices. Messages sent through iMessages are encrypted for user safety, and the app is free to use. You can send texts, videos, pictures, and GIFs, and even draw things to send through iMessage. Check out our tutorials on iMessage to learn more about the app.
Reason Why It’s One of the Best: If you have an Apple device, it’s already built in!
Those are all of the best chat apps we would recommend for iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android devices. Have you tried any of these before? Which one is your favorite? Tell us in a comment!
