Can you imagine a single day without sending messages? Although any app can substitute real-life communication, chatting apps like Kik allow for keeping in touch with your family, friends, and teammates anytime and anywhere. We’re going to compare the best apps like Kik. Keep reading!
Kik bridges the gap between the world and your chat. In other words, it’s a robust messaging app for keeping in touch with your family and friends. One thing that makes Kik stand out is it doesn’t require disclosing your phone number. With Kik, you just need an email address to sign up and start sending messages.
Kik Messenger is a cross-platform app. It was founded by students of the University of Waterloo in 2009. The very first version of the Kik app was developed for the Blackberry operating system. After a few years, Kik became available for Android and iOS users as well.
Nowadays, Kik is the easiest way to connect with friends from any part of the world. But the app has become much more than just a chatting app. Kik has also raised $120.5M in investments. That sounds impressive, doesn’t it?
Going back to its earlier years, Kik had 300M active users and was used by nearly half of US teenagers in 2016. Unfortunately, that’s the latest reported data for the number of users. The company hasn’t disclosed any stats since 2016.
Kik has everything you need to chat with your family or friends – emojis, GIFs, and text. You can say whatever you want in a million ways with Kik Messenger. Here are more features that make Kik so popular:
A simple and easy-to-use interface
Kik has recently updated its interface, which has made it more user-friendly and easy to use. Kik helps you to share your feelings and moments via messages.
Smart bots
Kik’s bots can do lots of different things – chat, play games, give advice, provide news or even fashion tips. They’re built for being social. You can add a bot to your group chat and play games with your pals.
Unique codes
With unique codes from Kik, you can easily connect with the world. If someone scans your code, a chat opens and they can immediately message you.
The safest messenger
Kik is more than just an anonymous chat app. It’s a place for everyone to be themselves and feel comfortable. Kik partners with lots of safety organizations to provide the highest standards of safety for teens as well as adults.
Kik isn’t the only chatting app on the web. There are dozens of alternative apps. So even if Kik shuts down, you’ll still have options to get in touch with your friends. Here are our top ten Kik-alternative apps.
WhatsApp isn’t as popular in the US as it is in Europe or Asia. Despite being the most used application for instant messaging in 100+ countries, WhatsApp isn’t as popular as Kik is in the US.
Nowadays, there are 900+M users who are using WhatsApp every month. With the app, you can chat with friends, send photos or videos, and call them with just a tap. In terms of features, the apps are quite similar. But when it comes to bots and social connections, Kik leaves WhatsApp far behind.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Drawing
Sharing Location
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
Here’s another app from Facebook. Messenger has mainly become so popular because of its integration with Facebook. Since Facebook has myriads of active users, it’s not a surprise that tons of people are also using Messenger. A vast majority of people think that Messenger is the easiest way to keep in touch with family and friends.
You need to be a registered Facebook user in order to use Messenger. But, you still need to download and install the Facebook Messenger app in order to chat with your friends with your smartphone. And there is one annoying fact about Messenger – Facebook ads.
Messenger has lots of features, including messages, audio calls, video calls, and games. Also, there are “Stories” following Snapchat and Instagram.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Drawing
Sharing Location
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
Viber is another messaging app that is popular all over the world. The app offers tons of features to help you keep in touch with your family and friends. Audio calls, video calls, and chats make up the core of this application. It also has some features of a very basic photo enhancer, allowing users to apply different effects and stickers to images before sending them.
With the unique Viber-out feature, you can call people who don’t have the Viber app for a reasonable price. There are also a lot of stickers and emoticons to help you express your feelings and emotions.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Drawing
Sharing Location
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
Line is a messaging platform from Asia. However, it skyrocketed in popularity and quickly became a cross-platform messaging app just like Kik. Of course, it isn’t as popular as WhatsApp or Viber, but it has a solid user base.
With Line, you can chat with your dearest, enjoy free audio calls and video calls. The app also allows for creating group chats with up to 200 users. There’s even a desktop client so you can continue chatting with your dearest without your phone.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Drawing
Sharing Location
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
WeChat is the most popular messenger in China. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have lots of users outside its home country. Nonetheless, it still has over a billion active users. WeChat is the main reason people completely stopped using emails and SMS in China.
WeChat doesn’t differ much from the other instant messaging apps on the market. But it allows for connecting and chatting with new people just like Kik. You just need to shake the phone, and WeChat connects you with the other users shaking their phones nearby.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Self-distracting messages
Drawing
Sharing Location
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
Snapchat is more than just a chatting app. Originally started as a person-to-person chatting application, it has evolved in a community where you can send short videos, live video chatting, create bitmoji avatars, and share your daily stories.
The Snapchat app has lots of AR-powered filters. You can snap a photo with a filter, add text, send it to your friend who can view it for a few seconds, and then your snap will disappear. Snapchat brings chatting to the next level.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Self-distracting messages
Photo Filters
Discover mode
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
Personal profiles
Hangouts is a messaging app from Google that is used by thousands of people all over the globe. Did you know that the Hangouts app has a better ranking than Kik?
Hangouts is a quick and safe way to keep in touch with friends as well as your work buddies. You can share photos, send emojis, stickers, make voice and video calls, etc. Also, the Hangouts app allows you to start a hangout, a group video call.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Cloud sync
Bot
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Encryption
Group chats
Over the past few years, Tango has significantly grown in popularity. It’s more of a social media newsfeed than an average messaging app. With the Tango app, you can post your status updates and check other users’ updates as well.
The app has everything you need to keep in touch with your buddies. But users especially like its Tinder-like feature that allows for chatting with new people.
By browsing people’s profiles, you can swipe right or left, depending on if you’d like to start a conversation or not. Tango also offers great discounts on popular brands so if you like shopping, this is right up your alley.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Live streams
Bot
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Send gifts
Group chats
Personal profiles
Check out our article “Apps Like Klarna: The 15 Best Alternatives“.
Telegram is the least popular messenger in the US, but its popularity is growing in Europe. Founded in 2013, the app has over 200M active users. When it comes to features and functions, Telegram shares the same core functionality as any other messenger. But when it comes to security, it has no rivals.
The app’s top concern is to keep all your messages secure through end-to-end encryption. Its technology prevents anybody outside of two people in the conversation from seeing the messages.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
Bot
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Group chats
MeWe is more about a social network that aims to outperform giants like Facebook and Instagram. MeWe is an ad-free social network. Its design and logic are similar to Facebook, including a timeline, file sharing, groups, private and group chats, but there isn’t a news feed, so MeWe users see friends’ content in chronological order.
MeWe has age restrictions. Users under 16 aren’t allowed to use the app. But there is one more downside to mention: MeWe isn’t free, so you need to pay a monthly subscription.
Chat
Voice calls
Video calls
Sending media
News feed
Stickers
GIFs
Emotions
Group chats
Monthly fee
There are lots of apps like Kik in 2024 but each app has its advantages and disadvantages. The mobile app market never stops developing, so there is still a chance to develop an alternative to Kik and make it thrive. You can borrow some features from a phone lookup app or pick up some from popular social media apps to make your solution unique and cover more users’ needs.
Messengers have become the main way for people to communicate. They allow users from any part of the world to keep in touch for free. Have an idea for a Kik alternative for PC and mobile? Drop us a line and we’ll bring your idea to reality.
Transform your idea into a successful product with the DOIT Software team.
Contact usThe price for the project depends on lots of factors such as an operating platform, number of features, and the content you’d like to add to your application. The average budget for developing a Kik-like app is somewhere between $30k-$60k.
The time to get your app developed also depends on many factors. For example, a quite simple social chat for iOS can take up to 800 hours. The development time for a multi-platform messenger compatible on Android, iOS, and desktop isn’t tripled since all apps will share the same back-end. However, it will definitely take more than 800 hours to develop a multi-platform app from scratch.
We know all the technologies and ways to make your instant messaging app a secure place for communication. End-to-end encryption, two-step verification, and content protection methods can help you secure your Kik-like messenger.
