Healthline, the world's largest health information provider, faced a significant challenge in creating an online social community experience for users of its Healthline Together Apps. These apps were designed to address chronic health issues and reduce the social isolation often experienced by those living with such conditions. The company aimed to create a user-friendly, engaging, and familiar platform where users could discuss their conditions and receive relevant content. However, they needed to ensure that the technology was easy to navigate, allowing users to focus on their conversations rather than struggling with the platform. The apps also needed to be competitive with other leading social networks in terms of design and functionality. Healthline considered building an in-house solution but realized that this would require significant resources and potentially detract from their core competencies.

Kiddom, an educational technology platform, experienced rapid growth following the COVID-19 pandemic as remote and hybrid learning models became the norm. The platform, which offers a range of features such as single sign-on, customizable lesson plans, and grade tracking, sought to add video chat and in-platform messaging to its suite of tools. However, building these core functions in-house was deemed difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. The company needed a reliable, scalable, and quick-to-market solution that could handle the increased user base and enhance the communication functionality of the platform.

Tabby, a flexible payment method provider, was facing a challenge with its mobile user experience (UX). The company relied on Zendesk Forms for customer support, but the mobile UX was inefficient and clunky, leading to lower user satisfaction and longer resolution times. The existing customer support ticketing system was not meeting the team's expectations. With nearly 70% of all support tickets originating from mobile users, the need for an improved solution was urgent. The company was looking for a way to connect users to agents quicker and resolve issues faster without having to replace Zendesk entirely.

Zumper, a two-sided rental marketplace, was facing a significant challenge in facilitating communication between renters and landlords. The initial contact was made through the platform, but all subsequent communication was conducted via email. This method was not only confusing for both parties but also posed a security risk as sensitive information like rental applications were shared over email. For landlords, managing multiple interested parties, scheduling tours, collecting applications, and processing fees via email was becoming unmanageable and leading to lost leads. The fragmented communication process was hindering the user experience and the overall rental journey.

CollX, a sports memorabilia marketplace, experienced a significant increase in user retention rates after integrating Stream's Chat API. However, as the user base grew, so did the number of bad actors and phishing attempts. Malicious users were attempting to phish for personal and financial information of other CollX users using platform circumvention techniques. Some users reported being harassed via chat with spammy messages or NSFW content. The Director of Operations at CollX, Alexander Liriano, was manually reviewing every flagged instance of suspicious, harmful, and off-topic content and taking appropriate action against those who violated the community guidelines. However, the manual review process was time-consuming and ineffective in preventing misuse of the app.

Compass Education, Australia's leading school management software provider, faced a significant challenge in streamlining communication for its three million daily active users, including teachers, school staff, parents, and students. The company needed to build an in-app chat solution to meet the increasing user demand for a more efficient and real-time communication tool. However, building an in-house chat solution would be resource-heavy and delay its product roadmap. The company historically relied on email, third-party messengers, and phone calls, which were time-consuming for school staff and teachers and created a disjointed communication flow. The need for a native messaging solution only grew as Compass Education expanded operations into multiple countries.

Crunchbase, a leading provider of private-company prospecting and research solutions, was facing a challenge with its in-house feed solution. The existing system was only capable of sending daily updates to the platform’s registered users, who follow specific companies and whole markets. This was a disadvantage for salespeople who rely on timely updates for business opportunities. To provide their growing base of business development customers a competitive advantage, Crunchbase required a customizable, low-latency news feed that displayed important updates such as funding announcements, new hires, and IPOs in real-time.

Global Citizen is a community that aims to connect individuals who are passionate about making a significant impact on the world's most pressing issues. The organization's primary focus is to raise awareness and draw attention to social justice, climate change, and the eradication of extreme poverty. Their efforts have been supported by leading political figures, philanthropists, and global organizations. However, Global Citizen's advocacy efforts are not limited to the online sphere. Since 2012, they have successfully organized the Global Citizen Music Festival, bringing together activists and music fans. Despite these efforts, Global Citizen faced challenges in delivering high-quality content and connecting like-minded users in real-time. They needed a solution that could support their active network, where members share their actions to make the world a better place.

Paired, a gamified app designed to help couples connect on a deeper level, faced a challenge in maintaining user engagement. The app's core functionality revolved around daily quizzes and questions that couples completed together. However, feedback from users, particularly those in long-distance relationships, indicated a need for a feature that would allow them to continue these conversations within the app. While some couples were able to continue these discussions outside the app, a significant number expressed a desire for a centralized platform to work on their relationships. Paired's CTO, Diego Lopez, recognized the need for a feature-rich chat solution that would encourage higher engagement among its users.

Vidyard, a platform that promotes personalization in virtual selling, was facing a challenge with its existing notification feed solution. The solution was not as feature-rich or flexible as required, which was impacting the user experience. The engineering team was in search of a new solution that was not only easy to integrate but could also deliver a top-notch user experience. The challenge was further intensified by the impending launch of Vidyard's Chrome extension, which required a robust and efficient notification feed solution. The team was running out of time to find the right solution that could meet their needs and ensure a successful product launch.

Welcome, a fast-growing virtual event platform, was founded in May 2020 to fill a market gap for high-end virtual conferences, trade shows, and parties. The company aimed to deliver an experience-first platform that could provide meaningful human connection to online events. However, during its development, Welcome faced a significant challenge. The company needed a sophisticated, reliable in-app chat to create a stand-out event experience in the multi-billion dollar virtual events industry. Building a custom messaging feature would have taken months, preventing the virtual event application from launching at a critical time when event organizers were weighing options. Furthermore, the team was focused on innovating virtual event interfaces, not messaging functionality.

YesHelp, a non-profit organization, was established to provide direct humanitarian aid to displaced Ukrainian women by connecting them with a network of local volunteers. The organization was faced with the challenge of creating a simple, secure, and effective communication platform that could overcome language barriers. The platform needed to safeguard users' identities and allow them to communicate in their native languages. The urgency of the situation, due to the ongoing war, required a mature chat solution with autotranslation capabilities that could be implemented quickly. Furthermore, the majority of the refugees being women, due to martial law restrictions on men aged 18-60, necessitated a focus on building a social network for women helping women.

Accelevents, an event management and marketing company, experienced significant growth during the pandemic as the demand for virtual events surged. The company was already transitioning towards a hybrid model and was well-positioned to adapt to the changing market. However, to provide a unique and dynamic experience for their expanding user base, Accelevents needed a flexible and scalable chat solution that could be launched quickly and support large-scale events. The company initially considered a Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) solution but realized it lacked the flexibility they required. Accelevents also faced the challenge of deciding whether to build a chat functionality from scratch or buy a ready-made solution. Building a sophisticated chat functionality would be time-consuming and require significant engineering resources, which could be better utilized in developing other platform features.

Alpega Group, a leading global logistics software company, faced the challenge of modernizing an industry deeply rooted in tradition. The company's freight exchange platforms, Teleroute and Wtransnet, needed an in-app chat solution that would appeal to a diverse user base and simplify multi-lingual communication at every step of the transport process. The company had to consider several factors such as agility, cost, performance, user experience, and infrastructure while evaluating potential chat solutions. The challenge was not only to introduce a new feature like chat but also to change the customers' habits and make chat more attractive than traditional communication methods like phone calls or emails.

Bandsintown, a popular music discovery platform with over 60 million users, was faced with the challenge of enhancing its new live streaming concert platform, Bandsintown PLUS. The platform was designed to provide an all-access pass to exclusive live stream concerts, allowing users to attend up to 25 live streamed concerts each month. However, Bandsintown recognized the need for a feature-rich chat functionality to foster engagement during concert broadcasts and artist Q&As. The company wanted to avoid using third-party live stream tools and instead sought to build a custom platform that would provide a rich live music experience for viewers and a professional performance environment for artists.

In 2015, Bandsintown, a popular concert discovery app, decided to add a feed to their application. The goal was to provide artists with a new way to reach their fan base and to bring a social aspect to Bandsintown by connecting users with their friends. Despite their team's substantial experience with Cassandra, they decided not to build an in-house solution. They were looking for a proven service that could handle the feeds for their 25 million strong user base, and that could scale up and down to meet the fluctuations in traffic caused by concert announcements.

Benzinga, a financial platform, was facing challenges with its in-house chat feature as it acquired more subscribers. The homegrown chat feature was not reliable and lacked the necessary features to support the growing user base. The chat connections were sometimes unstable, and the platform was struggling to scale up to accommodate the increasing number of subscribers. The company was at a crossroads, either to invest more resources into improving and maintaining the in-house solution or to outsource the chat functionality to a third-party provider. The stakes were high as the users, who are day traders, relied heavily on the chatroom for trading ideas and discussions. The company needed a solution that could support its rapidly growing user base, which had increased to over 5,000 members in a year and a half.

Betabrand, an online women’s apparel company, aimed to become the 'Facebook of fashion' by integrating common social network features into its platform. The company wanted to drive discussions among its users through social feeds and interactive chat. However, Betabrand did not want to divert its focus from its core competencies by developing these features in-house. The company was also keen on maintaining its unique selling proposition of providing an interactive online experience. Therefore, the integration of live chat was crucial for their business model. Betabrand needed a solution that could provide activity feeds for their designs and notifications, along with a real-time chat product, without requiring a heavy investment or a long development process.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) faced a significant challenge when the pandemic forced the temporary suspension of in-person programs and activities. To continue supporting the 4 million children and teens participating in their programs, BGCA launched a digital platform called MyFuture. However, the platform lacked a messaging functionality that could drive engagement and participation. The organization needed a chat solution that was safe, inclusive, and kid-friendly, with easy-to-use moderation features and block lists. The solution also needed to be flexible and easy to integrate, as BGCA had minimal in-house engineering resources and relied on an external contract developer.

Bunch, a multiplayer video chat gaming app, faced a significant challenge in providing a fast-to-market, asynchronous chat solution. As the daily active users of the app surged to over 100,000, the company needed a reliable chat solution from a third-party provider. The engineering team was tasked with finding a gaming chat API that offered a polished UI kit for a professional user experience and rapid implementation. The team also needed a solution with a flexible chat pricing model to suit their unique requirements and an API that developers enjoyed working with. Bunch evaluated several real-time messaging providers, including PubNub, Sendbird, Agora, Redis, and Firebase, before deciding on Stream.

CodePen, a social community for front-end designers and developers, faced a challenge with their activity feed back end. The original system needed an overhaul to improve performance and to add new and expanded functionality. The team recognized an opportunity to enhance personalized content recommendations to stay competitive in the evolving social media landscape. The challenge was to upgrade the existing feeds to personalize the user experience with interesting content. The team was faced with a classic build-vs-buy decision: Use internal dev resources to rebuild activity feeds and develop content discovery algorithms from scratch, or replace the feeds back end entirely.

CollX, a sports card trading app, initially integrated Stream Chat to add a social element to its platform. However, they soon discovered that collectors were using the chat feature to negotiate and bundle deals for trading cards. To increase conversions and user engagement, CollX needed to streamline the negotiation experience within the app. The challenge was to reduce the back-and-forth messaging between collectors and make the deal-making process more efficient and user-friendly.

Dealer-FX, an automotive software company, was facing a challenge with its existing SMS text messaging platform. The platform was used by service dealerships to communicate with vehicle owners. However, as the company scaled, it needed a more sophisticated communication platform with features such as 1:1 chat and automated group messaging to enhance the car maintenance experience. The existing disjointed communication tools were not sufficient to keep all dealership departments connected and updated about a customer's vehicle status. After several months of attempting to build a messaging platform in-house, Dealer-FX engineers decided to explore using a third-party chat API solution instead.

Dubsmash, a social platform that allows users to share videos via their mobile applications, faced the challenge of differentiating itself in a market dominated by competitors like TikTok. The company's unique focus on creators, rather than consumers, required a technology that could support creators in making compelling content and keeping engagement high within their followership. Dubsmash also aimed to provide a platform that valued diversity and did not censor content based on attractiveness or location. The company needed to ensure that its platform was not overcrowded by semi-pro creators and influencers, and that it provided enough visibility for lesser-known artists to be discovered. Additionally, Dubsmash needed to manage a large volume of data and ensure optimal uptime and visibility into user-based metrics.

Freeman, a global leader in the events industry, faced a significant challenge when the global pandemic forced most in-person events to transition to an online medium. The company had to quickly adapt and create a virtual event platform to serve their new user requirements. The new platform, OnlineEvent®, required a chat feature that enabled attendees to communicate with each other in specific channels during live stream presentations. The challenge was to integrate live stream chat functionality into its new virtual event platform to support thousands of concurrent users — and fast. Freeman's director of digital product management, Elissa Ewers, had to evaluate chat vendors in a short time frame, focusing on chat solutions containing must-have attributes such as rapid integration, scale to support tens of thousands of concurrent users, security, and single sign-on functionality.

Hio, a software company specializing in enhancing site experiences, faced a significant challenge with its patented site engagement software, Hovr. The software required a real-time chat solution to drive community engagement. Initially, Hio integrated Sendbird Chat into Hovr. However, they soon realized that they needed a more robust messaging solution that included features such as threads, channels, URL thumbnails, AI moderation, and more. The lack of these features in Sendbird was a significant issue as they were crucial for Hovr's functionality. Furthermore, Sendbird's inability to deliver these features as per their roadmap was concerning for Hio, a rapidly evolving company that relied heavily on its component partners for success.

homeis, a digital platform for foreign-born communities, was facing a significant challenge with its chat capabilities. Despite having a full-stack development team proficient in Javascript, React-Native, React, and Node.JS, they were struggling with their existing chat provider. The provider was plagued with stability issues and was supported by a slow and inefficient team. As a startup, homeis needed to focus its resources on its own product development, making it impractical to build a chat functionality in-house. They needed a third-party SDK that was compatible with their tech stack and could provide a reliable and efficient chat service. The challenge was to find a solution that could help them avoid reinventing the wheel and focus on their core product.

Hopin, a leading shared experiences platform, was faced with the challenge of enhancing its Virtual Venue’s chat solution to ensure reliable scalability and speed. The company was experiencing a surge in demand for larger events, and it was crucial to provide a reliable and bug-free messaging system for attendees. The in-house chat solution needed to perform optimally as the company grew rapidly. Hopin’s engineering team decided that integrating a third-party in-app chat solution was the best way to meet these demands. The company was looking for a tech partner, not just a provider, to help guide the integration process and provide ongoing support.

Pluang, a multi-asset investment platform, was seeking to replace its existing Telegram groups with an in-app messaging solution to create a more seamless user experience (UX) for its investment community. The company wanted to own the user experience from end to end, curating a more custom and centralized platform that investors could trust, engage, and convert within. The envisioned chat solution was also expected to integrate with Pluang's Salesforce CRM to streamline account and record creation for the business. With over one million active users, Pluang required a performant, reliable, and scalable chat API offering.

Product Hunt, a platform that allows users to share, discuss, and vote on the latest tech creations, faced a significant challenge as its user community grew. The platform had developed a custom notification and activity feed for its users, which initially met their needs. However, as the community expanded, this in-house solution was unable to scale effectively. The developers found themselves spending an increasing amount of time on tedious fixes due to the inflexibility of the previous solution. They were unable to make necessary changes, and the system's inability to scale became a significant issue, hindering the platform's growth and user engagement.