A video calling API typically provides access to the underlying functionality of video calling services, such as audio and video capture, encoding and decoding, and transmission over the internet. This allows developers to create their own user interfaces and features for their video calling applications while leveraging the power and reliability of the underlying video-calling service.
There are many different video calling APIs on the market, each with its own features, capabilities, and limitations. Some of the most popular video calling APIs to include the WebRTC API, Digital Samba’s API, the Skype API, and the Zoom API.
Table of Contents
- Digital Samba
- VideoSDK
- Cometchat
- Sinch
- Vonage (Formerly TokBox)
- Daily.co
- MirrorFly
- Apphitect
- Agora
- PubNub
- Twilio
- Conclusions
Overall, a video-calling API is a valuable tool for developers who want to add video-calling functionality to their applications. With a video-calling API, developers can create user-friendly and engaging video-calling experiences for their users, while leveraging the reliability and power of the underlying video-calling service.
It is possible to embed live chat and live calling directly into websites.
To use a live chat API, developers would typically create a user account with the live chat service provider, and then obtain an API key or other authentication credentials. They would then use the API to access the live chat service's functionality and integrate it into their website. This might involve adding HTML and JavaScript code to the website, as well as making API calls to the live chat service to manage user accounts, create chat rooms, and handle messages and other data.
Overall, it is efficient to embed live chat into a website using an API. By using a live chat API, developers can add real-time communication capabilities to their website, and provide their users with an engaging and user-friendly live chat and video experience.
Digital Samba
Digital Samba’s video calling API is built for integration into web apps and websites. Any feature from Digital Samba as a flagship product is available through their API; allowing developers to pick and choose which out-of-the-box features they want to implement in their own custom application.
Digital Samba’s video calling SDK also allows developers to take a deep dive into the inner workings of real-time communication features to make their own home-brew implementation if that is desired.
The video calling API is top-down flexible, allowing developers to efficiently select and use features that just work and embed those features directly into any application that supports HTML and API calls to Digital Samba’s robust global infrastructure.
- Free - 3,000 free service minutes per month, up to 49 concurrent users.
- €99/month - 25,000 service minutes per month, up to 100 concurrent users.
- €495/month - 82,500 service minutes per month, up to 2000 concurrent users
- Enterprise-level - Call for pricing and per-client service plan.
Pro’s
- Security - Digital Samba is also secure. Utilising existing infrastructure through an API as a microservice can potentially expose developers to back-end security holes or conflicts with user data integrity. Digital Samba is natively compliant with the European GDPR standards, which is the highest global standard for data privacy and security. This gives developers the peace of mind to confidently build and implement solutions from Digital Samba’s video calling API.
- Flexibility - Digital Samba Embedded covers a wide range of functionality that goes beyond the feature list that’s offered by competitors. Digital Samba Embedded integrates well with other software that can make standard API calls over the web, making it a good option for inclusion in stand-alone software applications for both mobile and desktop environments.
Con’s
- There’s a tradeoff between two lines of Digital Samba Embedded. Digital Samba Embedded for meetings has better performance and flexibility but is not as feature complete as Digital Samba Embedded for Webinars.
VideoSDK
VideoSDK is a live video API provider that hosts two products. One product is for live audio/video, and the other is for interactive live streaming. They have web and mobile documentation available for developers and also support React.
Pro’s:
- Good documentation
- Developer-oriented
- Discord community
Con’s:
- No out-of-the-box whitelabel flagship product
- Does not advertise GDPR compliance
- Free - 10,000 monthly service minutes
- Pay as you go, with bulk discounts, starting at $1.99/month
Cometchat
Cometchat offers SDK’s that support live video and a lot of chat functionality. They also make their SDK available in many popular languages, such as Vue, Kotlin, and Java to name a few. Cometchat focuses heavily on live chat but also supports video calling
Pro’s:
- Heavily tested by their developers.
- Multiple language support.
- Many chat features
Con’s
- Live Video is less prominent than live chat
- Expensive
- Free - Until launch. Up to 25 users.
- $149/month - Has features like Chat Widgets, and SDK’s
- $399/month - Has features like whiteboard sharing and moderation features
- $749/month - Voice transcription + other features
- Call for pricing - Enterprise-level service on a per-account basis
- Pay-as-you-go Voice - $0.001/user per minute
- Pay-as-you-go Video - $0.003/user per minute
Sinch
Sinch is a voice and video service that supports crossover from in-app voice, video and text to phone calls and SMS service. This access to tier 1 networking (settlement-free peering) is a powerful offer that makes Sinch a good platform to develop when building something like a telemarketing business or large-scale customer support service.
Pro’s:
- Access to phone calls and SMS text
- In-app support for video calling
Con’s
- Very vague on pricing
- Feature-creep
- Free version
- Contact for pricing & availability
Vonage (Formerly TokBox)
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The Vonage video API is available for developers to integrate live video calls into websites, mobile applications, Windows desktop environments, Linux desktop environments, and more. The audio-video data transfer for Vonage’s API is based on WebRTC. Vonage’s API has separate components for client and server-side executable code.
Client-side code runs on the user’s environment such as a mobile app, or website. It handles the majority of the Vonage API’s functionality, while server-side code is designed to run on web infrastructure that connects client-side functionality through the management of session tokens.
Pro’s
- Plenty of languages and frameworks supported
- Granular control over how your app works
- Quick to debug due to isolated architecture.
Con’s
- Comparatively steep learning curve
- Complex API and SDK structure makes development slower
- Starts at $9.99/month with 2,000 user-minutes
- Pay-as-you-go pricing available at $0.00395/user-minute
Daily.co
Daily. co is another option for doing video calling applications with the use of an API. They market themselves mostly towards the healthcare market, but live video is live video and can be used for any general purpose that uses the same underlying technology, so it can be used for many purposes outside of healthcare/telehealth.
Pro’s
- Staff are very familiar with telehealth
- Good documentation
- Supports Flutter, React, and other popular frameworks.
Con’s
- Requires signup for product demonstration
- Hard to justify a commitment to if your application is not telehealth
- Support sold as add-on service packages starting at $250/month
- $0.0015/minute for video (discount rate)
- $0.00036/minute for audio (discount rate)
MirrorFly
Another option for developing an application that uses live user-fed video and audio is MirrorFly’s API. MirrorFly offers quick and simple solutions to the majority of simple needs regarding video and audio integration into basic applications on the web and in mobile and desktop environments.
Pro’s
- Very simple and easy to get started with
- Good documentation
Con’s
- Pricing goes up rapidly
- Hard to commit to if your product may take on more features down the road that are unsupported
- Very expensive
- Tiered pricing structure starting at $299/month
- $999/month for the premium tier which offers 7500 minutes of voice and video, with additional over-charges
Apphitect
Apphitect is based out of the UAE and offers cloud infrastructure that can support live video calling and some other peer-to-peer data streaming functionality. They offer support for many languages and frameworks with their API, and can quickly deploy a working, production-ready application that includes live video streaming between users.
Pro’s
- It’s hosted out of the UAE
- Has a generic pre-packaged product available for white-labelling
Con’s
- Their main website connection is not secure
- Not transparent with pricing.
- Contact sales
Agora
Agora offers an exhaustive list of API’s and SDK’s for developing live video solutions for the web. Agora also offers community connections on StackOverflow and other technical help sites, and it also offers a stand-alone product with lots of features. There are also many options for using their API to develop live video solutions.
Pro’s
- So many features!
- Active community
- Mature stand-alone product
Con’s
- Stand-alone product not clearly available for white labelling
- Feature creep.
- Separate pricing rates for HD video streaming
- $3.99 / 1000 minutes
PubNub
PubNub offers an API that allows developers to integrate video and voice into their applications across the web as well as in native desktop environments. They use a Publish/Subscribe REST API architecture for their back-end service, which is somewhat novel.
Pro’s
- Has request limiting as a back-end security feature
- Strictly focused on API provisions
Con’s
- No stand-alone product
- Relatively steep learning curve
- Starts at $49 /month plus MAUs
Twilio
Twillio is another video conferencing API provider that allows for WebRTC-like data streams across live users. Another thing that Twilio offers is that many providers don’t support SMS and other telephone compatibility features. Twilio may be the most accessible provider for internet-to-phone crossover support on this list.
Pro’s
- SMS support
- Solid API provider for other live video web development
Con’s
- Hard to leave once you commit to developing with them
- Live customer support is available only on higher service plans
- Dynamic pricing structure with multiple discount points
- Generally ~$4 / 1000 minutes
Conclusions
There are many different ways to include live video calling or chat features in a modern website. There is not a truly one-size-fits-all solution that covers what every developer is looking for all of the time. However, one thing that can be universally recommended is talking to an expert.
That said, committing to an API provider for making products or services that you will rely on for the foreseeable future as a business obligation is a serious decision.
While video calling API’s have some common features; they are not the same, and those differences in the quality of the API service or the company providing the API can make a significant impact on your idea’s scalability and operational security going forward. It is very important to make the right decision off the bat when choosing a video call API.
Digital Samba has a live technical sales team that can schedule a demonstration of what our video conferencing API can do for developers that are looking into using back-end API’s to handle live voice, video, and chat with their applications.
Reach out to us to have a tech help you flesh out the best way forward with your project.
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Best API for Adding Video Calling and Chat to a Website in 2023
What is Digital Samba Embedded
