A comparison on popular SDKs available for implementing audio, video call and chat functionalities

Telemedicine platforms are getting popular by the day. Virtual consultations are becoming the need of the hour, especially with the latest COVID 19 pandemic. With enhanced security and encryption protocols getting utmost importance, patients and doctors have been able to communicate freely and securely through chat options and video conferencing features incorporated in telemedicine apps. This face to face interaction plays a crucial role in assuring the patient that he/she is meeting with a real person, and the doctor can ‘see’ the patient virtually in real-time, thereby facilitating better treatment regimes.

For the past few months Cabot's Experienced Development Teams have been researching on various video call/Chat service SDKs for our telemedicine product. Have a look at the findings in the infographic below.

Based on the findings by Cabot's tech teams it was found that Agora.io would be the best choice for our use cases and the customized UI requirements for our product.

During our research, we found that CometChat SDK is the easiest to integrate with a project as it is almost plug and play. But this SDK was not selected as its pricing was very high. And it would not be feasible to go forward with this SDK for our use cases.

Then we went on to study more on Twilio SDK. We could successfully create POCs on both iOS, Android, and backend, and we also could simultaneously video call and chat with other members of the channel. But As Twilio has very little support for Angular and its resources are very scarce it was very difficult for us to develop a sample POC for our web app.

It was then we decided to go forward with Agora.io as using Agora we could develop POCs for Android, iOS, and also web apps. It was not much of a hassle to implement in the backend also. Pricing wise it is closely matched with Twilio. Although its advertised pricing is competitive, according to the information from their website we had to contact their sales team for their pricing plan for HIPAA compliant apps as they do not provide per-minute pricing for HIPAA compliant apps.