Building chat into a product sounds like a scoped problem. In practice, it covers a lot of ground - messaging, moderation, notifications, compliance, analytics, infrastructure, and more.
CometChat is built to handle all of it. Every feature across every plan has been thought through, from the first message a user sends to the audit log a compliance team asks for two years later.
This post walks through all of it. Every feature, every category, explained plainly - what it does and why it's there. Think of it as the complete map of what you're getting, before you need to go looking for it.
The Plans
CometChat's chat and messaging offering runs across four tiers: Build, Basic, Advanced, and Enterprise.
Build is the free tier. It's fully featured enough to integrate, test, and validate your use case - not a stripped demo. If you're building a proof of concept or evaluating whether CometChat fits before committing, this is where you start.
Basic covers the essentials for a production-grade real-time chat experience. Messaging primitives, engagement features, delivery receipts, basic search, push notifications - the things your users will actually notice.
Advanced adds multi-channel notifications, AI moderation, and deeper analytics and insights. This is where the platform starts doing more of the operational heavy lifting for you.
Enterprise is for teams that need higher scale, dedicated infrastructure, contractual uptime guarantees, and the kind of support that involves humans who know your architecture.
One thing worth saying upfront: none of these plans have hidden costs. No charges for bandwidth, storage, message translation, search, thumbnail generation, or image moderation. A small number of features involve third-party costs (marked where relevant), but the default is: what you see in the plan is what you pay for.
Foundation: The Numbers That Actually Matter
Before features, the numbers that define your operational envelope.
Monthly Active Users (MAU) is how plans are sized. It counts unique users who log in during a billing period - not seats, not API calls.
Concurrent connections is the peak number of simultaneous active connections at any point during the billing period. For real-time products, this is often the number that matters more than MAU during traffic spikes.
Messages per month is the volume ceiling for outbound messages.
Message retention is how long messages live in the system.
API access duration governs how far back you can query messages via the API and SDK. Different from retention - storage and queryability are handled separately.
File storage duration governs how long images and attachments remain accessible.
Core Messaging
The table stakes. These are the features every chat product needs - though the depth varies considerably depending on how seriously they're implemented.
1:1 Conversations
Direct messaging between two users. The baseline for any communication product.
Group Conversations
Messaging in groups, with three access models:
Public groups - anyone can join
Protected groups - joinable with a password
Private groups - only the group admin can add members
The access model matters more than it seems. A marketplace might want open community channels and private seller-buyer rooms. A healthcare app might want only private groups, always. The configuration is yours to set.
User Lists and Friends Management
Fetch all users in the app, or just the friends of the logged-in user. Friends functionality includes adding and removing connections, fetching online presence, and getting notified about presence changes in a user's friend network - the building blocks of social features without having to build the social graph yourself.
Typing Indicators
Real-time feedback that someone in the conversation is composing. Small feature, surprisingly large impact on perceived responsiveness.
Text and Custom Messages
Send text messages, and any other custom message type you define - location pins, product cards, booking confirmations, whatever your use case requires. The message schema is extensible by design.
Message Threads
Separate reply chains within a conversation. Each thread has its own message tracking, which means group channels can carry multiple parallel discussions without collapsing into noise. Widely underused by teams that are in a hurry. Worth implementing properly.
Quote/Reply
Reply directly to a specific message with a swipe gesture. Keeps context intact in fast-moving conversations without requiring full thread management.
Rich Text Formatting
Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, code blocks, hyperlinks, ordered and unordered lists, blockquotes. The basics for any product where users write more than a sentence.
Media Sharing
Attach and send images, videos, and documents in a conversation.
Voice Messages
Record and send audio messages. Increasingly common user behavior - especially on mobile, in markets where typing in a second language is slower than speaking, and in applications where hands-free interaction matters.
Message History
Full access to previous messages and threads within a conversation. Your users expect to scroll back. This makes that possible.
Tags - Users and Conversations
Assign custom identifiers to users and conversations. Useful for filtering, categorization, and search. If you're building a multi-tenant product or a marketplace with different user segments, tags are how you keep things organized at scale.
User Roles and Permissions
Assign users to custom roles and configure what each role can and cannot do - send messages, receive messages, access specific features. The role system applies across both the chat experience and the admin dashboard.
Edit and Delete Messages
Users can edit messages they've sent or delete them. Standard expectation in modern chat.
Block Users
End users can block other users from sending them messages. Essential for any consumer-facing product.
Ban, Unban, and Kick from Groups
Moderators can remove users from groups temporarily or permanently, or reinstate them. The admin-side tools to actually run a community.
Localization
Adapt the chat experience to your users' language and locale. Supports the full range of languages and regions needed for international products.
Engagement and Collaboration
These are the features that determine whether users stay in a conversation - or drift away.
Mentions
Tag a user with @ to get their attention. Pull a list of all mentions for a specific user. Navigate mentions within a conversation or thread. In group environments with high message volume, mentions are how signal cuts through noise.
Reactions
Let users react to messages with emojis. See who reacted with what. The feedback loop is fast, low-friction, and surprisingly effective at keeping engagement alive in group settings.
Pinned Messages
Pin a message for all participants in a conversation so it's always reachable. Useful for announcements, ground rules, reference information, or anything that should outlast the scroll.
Link Previews
Fetch and surface metadata from links before the user clicks. Title, description, image - enough to know whether the link is worth opening.
Saved Messages
Users can save individual messages for their own quick retrieval later. A personal bookmark layer on top of the conversation.
Stickers
Send pre-designed sticker packs for expressive communication that doesn't require typing.
GIFs
Send GIFs via popular GIF providers. Some users communicate almost exclusively this way. Not supporting it tends to show.
Image Thumbnails
Generate thumbnails in multiple sizes so the interface shows the right image at the right scale regardless of screen context - conversation list, message bubble, lightbox view.
Polls
Send a poll into a conversation and collect responses inline. The results aggregate in the same message. Good for quick decisions, preference gathering, or lightweight community input.
Reminders
Set time-based reminders tied to a message. At the scheduled time, the platform delivers the message. Useful for async workflows, follow-up prompts, and anything where timing matters.
Message Shortcuts / Smart Text
Type a short trigger phrase and the platform expands it to the full message. The example in the docs: typing "ROFL" sends "Rolling on the floor laughing." You define the mappings. Useful for support teams, frequently sent phrases, or any context where users type the same things repeatedly.
Message Translation
Translate messages into the user's preferred language in real time. No additional charge. Multilingual user bases become manageable without any additional infrastructure on your end.
Live Reactions
Send reactions to the entire conversation, visible to everyone - not attached to a specific message. Often used during live events, streams, or shared viewing experiences to surface collective emotion.
Collaborative Document
A shared document embedded in a conversation that all participants can edit together. The use cases range from shared notes in a support session to collaborative briefs in a creative tool.
Collaborative Whiteboard
A shared whiteboard within a conversation. Real-time, multi-user. Useful for any product where users need to sketch, diagram, or think visually together.
URL Shortening
Shorten long URLs to preserve message readability and manage character count in constrained contexts.
Voice-to-Text Transcription
Convert voice messages into text. Accessibility feature, convenience feature, and increasingly a baseline expectation.
AI Assistance
AI features built into the messaging layer, not bolted on afterward.
Conversation Starters
AI-generated suggestions to begin a conversation with a user or in a group. Helpful when users know they want to engage but aren't sure how to start - particularly relevant in dating apps, networking products, or any context where the first message carries weight.
Reply Suggestions
AI-suggested replies based on the conversation context. Reduces response friction. Useful in support contexts, high-volume messaging products, or any scenario where response speed matters.
Conversation Summarization
AI-generated summaries of conversations for users who are catching up after time away. In high-volume channels or long threads, this is the feature that makes rejoining a conversation feel human rather than exhausting.
Search and Message Status
The infrastructure behind knowing what was said, when, and whether it landed.
Basic Search
Search across messages, users, and groups within a conversation.
Cross-Conversation Search
Search for messages across all conversations - not just the one currently open.
Advanced Search with Filters
Search across conversations with filters including attachments, mentions, links, and specific user IDs. The version of search that professional users actually need.
1:1 Delivery and Read Receipts
See which users have received a message and which have read it, in direct conversations.
Group Delivery and Read Receipts
The same receipt functionality in group conversations - who received, who read. Operationally more complex than 1:1. Implemented correctly here.
Mark Conversation as Read
Mark an entire conversation as read in a single action.
Mark Up to Message as Read
Mark a conversation as read up to a specific message, leaving everything after it as unread.
Mark as Unread
Mark messages as unread from a specific point - useful for flagging things to return to later.
Unread Message Count
The badge number. Count of unread messages across 1:1 and group conversations. Sounds trivial. The implementation details are not.
Advanced Messaging Controls
The controls that matter once you're operating at scale or in environments where behavior needs to be tightly configured.
Last Message Configuration
Configure which types of messages count toward the last message preview in the conversation list. If a system event or a reaction shouldn't update the preview, you can control that.
Presence Control
Take full control over websocket connections to manage user presence. Useful for custom presence logic, performance tuning, or scenarios where you want presence to reflect something specific in your product - not just whether a socket is open.
Role-Based Access Controls
Define which roles can send specific message types, who can receive them, and how users are shown to each other based on role mapping. The configuration layer for complex permission architectures.
Notifications
Notifications are often treated as an afterthought. They rarely behave like one.
Mobile Push Notifications
Send push notifications for new messages to iOS and Android. The baseline.
Email Notifications
Deliver unread messages via email for users who are offline or have opted in. Keeps users connected when they're not in the app.
SMS Notifications
Send new message intimation via SMS. For use cases where email isn't enough or for users in markets where SMS is the primary fallback.
Email Reply Piping
Users can reply directly to email notifications and those replies are automatically routed back into CometChat. The conversation continues regardless of where the user is responding from.
Notification Rules and Conditions
Control when notifications are sent based on message types, conversation types (1:1 or group), thread context, and end-user preferences. Notification behavior without configuration tends to be either too noisy or too quiet. This is the tuning surface.
User Notification Preferences
Give end users the ability to manage which notifications they receive. Add a notification schedule - specific hours during which notifications will and won't be delivered. Users who feel in control of their notifications stay opted in. Users who don't, don't.
Notification Templates
Templatize notification titles and body copy based on message type and privacy settings. A message in a private group probably shouldn't expose the group name in the notification. A reaction notification looks different from a direct message. Templates make this manageable.
Multiple Push Credentials
Configure multiple push notification provider credentials for different scenarios - staging vs. production app bundles, different mobile applications sharing the same CometChat instance. The kind of flexibility that sounds minor until you need it.
Custom API and Webhook for Notifications
Use your own third-party notification service via API or webhook. CometChat triggers the event; you own the delivery.
Notification Logs
Detailed logs tracking when notifications are sent and when they fail. When users report that they're not receiving notifications, these logs are where you start.
Moderation
Moderation is infrastructure. The products that treat it as a checkbox tend to find out the hard way.
Rule-Based Moderation Engine
Keyword filters and custom regex patterns, triggered on defined conditions. The starting point for any moderation setup - fast, configurable, and effective against predictable bad behavior.
AI NLP Moderation
An AI-powered moderation engine that uses NLP techniques to understand context and intent, not just match patterns. The difference between "I'm going to kill this presentation" being blocked and passing correctly. Context-awareness changes the signal-to-noise ratio significantly.
LLM-Powered Moderation
Evaluation of text and media using OpenAI's LLMs, with full conversation context factored in. This is the moderation layer for ambiguous situations - where the harm is in the pattern of a conversation rather than a single message.
Automatic Blocking
Block violating content automatically before it reaches recipients. No human review step required for clear violations.
Flag for Human Review
Route borderline content to a moderation queue for review. Keeps humans in the loop where automation shouldn't be the final word.
Out-of-Box Rule Templates
Pre-built rules for the most common moderation needs: text profanity filter, contact details filter, email filter. Operational on day one, without building a rule set from scratch.
File and Malware Scanning
Integrate malware and virus scanning into the moderation pipeline. Files and attachments are evaluated before delivery. If a file is infected, it doesn't reach the recipient. Enterprise-specific, and exactly the kind of requirement that arrives via compliance team memo.
AI Image and Video Moderation
Out-of-box rules powered by CometChat's internal AI for image and video content evaluation. Visual content moderation without building a computer vision pipeline.
LLM-Powered Contextual Rules
Pre-built OpenAI-powered prompts that evaluate the full context of a conversation for: platform circumvention, harassment, grooming, scams, fraud, and misinformation. These are the categories that pattern-matching doesn't reliably catch. They work across languages.
Custom Rules
Build your own moderation rules for your specific use case. The rules engine is extensible.
Custom API Content Review
Call your own API endpoint to review content in real time and approve or reject it before delivery. Your logic, your infrastructure - integrated into the moderation pipeline.
Webhooks for Blocked and Flagged Messages
Webhook events fire when messages are blocked or flagged. Feed your own systems, dashboards, or workflows with that signal.
Evaluation Filters
The granular criteria the moderation engine can evaluate against:
Sender/receiver information - user ID, name, role, tags
Message content - the text or media itself
Profanity - text profanity detection
Contact details - phone numbers and email addresses in messages
Sentiment - positive, negative, neutral
Toxicity - aggressive or harmful tone
Image explicitness - visual content evaluation
Video explicitness - video content evaluation
Spam - spam classification
Offline redirect detection - messages attempting to move a conversation off-platform
Message similarity - flag messages similar to a custom-defined list
Multilingual LLM prompts - across languages, detect circumvention, harassment, grooming, scams, fraud, and misinformation using pre-built prompts
Custom prompts - define your own evaluation criteria for LLM-powered review
End-User Controls
Users can block other users from messaging them. Standard expectation; included by default.
Moderator Tools
Moderators can ban and kick users from groups. The tools for actually running a community, not just observing it.
User Reporting
Users can report messages. Reports are processable via the dashboard or via webhook for external systems.
Analytics and Insights
Understanding what's happening in your chat layer - not just that messages are flowing.
App Usage Dashboard
High-level usage reports across the application. The overview.
Multi-Tenant Dashboard
For master apps managing multiple tenant applications - aggregate reporting across all instances.
User and Group Insights
Deeper analytics including: top users and groups, concurrent user heatmaps, online frequency distribution, user engagement patterns post-signup, user retention graphs, user abandonment analysis, and new signup data. The behavioral layer that tells you not just how many users you have, but which ones are actually engaged.
Messaging Activity Insights
Analytics on messaging behavior: messages sent, delivered, and read heatmaps; what users discuss before they start sharing media; activity breakdowns by user or group; conversations trending toward churn; average message exchange rates; message type distribution; conversations that lead to calls; words or characters per message; messages that result in threads. This is the data that tells you whether your chat experience is working - not just running.
Moderation Insights
Data on what the moderation engine is catching: blocked and flagged message analytics. Visibility into the health and safety of your platform.
Custom Insights
Build your own analytics views based on your specific use case. When the defaults don't cover your question, custom insights are the answer.
Funnel Analysis
Analyze chat engagement data as part of your user funnel: conversion rates, drop-off points, interaction patterns. The bridge between chat behavior and product outcomes.
AI-Driven Behavioral Insights
Ask targeted questions and use the AI engine to generate insights: behavioral patterns, user preferences, engagement likelihood. Analysis that would otherwise require a data team.
Conversation Intelligence
AI-generated insights from individual conversations: what product or topic is being discussed, conversation sentiment, match probability for dating apps, and more. The layer between message data and meaningful signal.
User Metadata Enrichment
Prompt the AI engine with questions and it automatically adds metadata to user profiles - preferences, interests, activity patterns, likelihood of engagement. Profiles that get more useful over time without manual effort.
Conversation Metadata Enrichment
Same capability applied to conversations. The AI adds meaningful metadata - product discussed, sentiment, context - automatically. Conversation data that's actually queryable.
Integrations
The connectors and webhooks that keep CometChat in sync with the rest of your stack.
Intercom and Chatwoot Sync
Bi-directional message sync between CometChat and Intercom, and between CometChat and Chatwoot. For products that need to bridge end-user chat with support tooling, this is cleaner than custom webhook work.
Webhooks
A fine-grained, high-volume webhook platform. You choose which events each endpoint receives, with configurable retry behavior. The event types:
Message events - sent, edited, deleted
User events - blocked or unblocked
Group events - creation, deletion, members joining or leaving, bans, unbans, removals, updates, ownership transfers
Call events - initiated, started, unanswered, participant joins and leaves, ended, recording generated
Moderation events - blocked and flagged messages
Content review - webhook to your API for real-time approval or rejection
Notification events - trigger push, email, and SMS through your own third-party provider
Presence and receipt events - presence changes, delivery and read receipts, reactions, mentions
The webhook coverage is intentionally comprehensive. The principle is that your system should be able to react to anything that happens in the messaging layer.
Migration
Migrating chat data from an existing system is usually harder than building the initial integration. These features exist to make it survivable.
Bi-Directional Sync During Transition
Sync messages between your existing provider and CometChat during the transition period. Users stay in the existing interface; the data moves underneath.
Data Migration API
Import historical message data programmatically. Messages, conversations, user records - all migratable via API.
Hands-Free Migration Assistance
CometChat's team works alongside yours through the migration. Not documentation - actual human involvement for the parts that require judgment.
Infrastructure
The deployment options and reliability guarantees that run underneath everything else.
Region Selection
Choose the region closest to your users for lower latency. Your data doesn't have to cross the planet.
High Availability
CometChat's infrastructure uses HA deployment across regions to guard against single-region cloud failures. Uptime that doesn't depend on one data center having a good day.
Global Edge Network
Serve end users through a global edge network for minimum latency regardless of geography.
Multi-Tenant Management
Create and manage unlimited isolated CometChat instances programmatically. The foundation for building multi-tenant SaaS products on top of CometChat.
Dedicated Infrastructure
Deploy a dedicated infrastructure stack in the AWS region of your choice. Closer to your users, compliant with local data regulations, isolated from shared infrastructure. For teams where "we're on shared infrastructure" is an answer that gets escalated.
On-Premises / Private Cloud
Run the full platform on your own servers or private cloud, behind your firewall. Maximum control, maximum data residency. For organizations where data leaving their environment is not a conversation.
SLA Guarantees
Contractual uptime guarantees. Your end-user experience is protected by a documented commitment, not an informal expectation.
Custom Domain (CNAME)
Mask CometChat's API domain with your own subdomain - chat.yourproduct.com instead of CometChat's domain. White-labeling at the DNS layer.
Compliance
The certifications and regulations CometChat is built to meet - so you don't have to figure them out separately.
ISO 27001
International standard for information security management.
SOC 2
Independent audit confirming secure data handling and privacy practices.
GDPR
EU data protection compliance.
CCPA
California Consumer Privacy Act compliance for consumer data transparency and control.
PIPEDA
Canadian data protection compliance for handling personal information.
HIPAA with Signed BAA
U.S. healthcare data compliance. The Business Associate Agreement is available, which is the piece that actually makes HIPAA compliance real in a vendor relationship.
Security
The controls that protect your data, your users, and your platform at every layer.
SSL/TLS
Transport-layer encryption for all data in transit.
AES-256 Encryption
Data at rest encrypted with AES-256.
Signed URLs with Configurable TTL
All media shared across CometChat is protected by signed URLs with configurable expiration. The URL that works today won't work indefinitely.
Disappearing Messages
Messages that automatically delete after a configurable interval. Useful for privacy-sensitive contexts.
User Role-Based Access Control
Different roles and permission levels for both end-application chat users and admin dashboard administrators. The two access layers - product and platform - are distinct.
Team Dashboard Access
Grant team members access to the CometChat dashboard.
Team Dashboard Roles
Set roles to limit what team members can do within the dashboard. Not everyone needs admin-level access.
Two-Factor Authentication
2FA for dashboard login. An extra layer that's increasingly expected and occasionally required.
SSO - Google and GitHub
Team members can log in to the dashboard via Google or GitHub. Standard in developer-facing products for good reason.
SAML and LDAP
Connect your own identity provider for centralized authentication. For organizations with existing identity infrastructure that needs to be the source of truth.
Audit Logs
Track and review all key dashboard activities. Required for compliance programs; useful for security investigations.
Developer Tools
The integration surfaces. The ones you actually use depend on how much control you want and how much of the UI you're building yourself.
Visual Customizer
Customize your chat UI visually - no code, no configuration files - and export the result. Useful for quick visual alignment before development.
Prebuilt UI Components
Drop-in chat UI components. Fast launch, polished out of the box. The starting point for most integrations.
Figma Files
Editable Figma source files for all UI Kits. Designers can work in the design tool they already use, without reverse-engineering the component structure.
Widget Configurator
Configure and style the chat widget visually, then embed it with a single script. The no-code path to a production-ready widget.
No-Code Embed Widget
A plug-and-play chat widget for websites that works with one script tag. For teams that need chat running without a frontend build step.
Client-Side SDKs
Full-featured SDKs for JavaScript, React Native, iOS, Android, and more. The programmatic path to complete control over the chat experience.
REST APIs
Server-side APIs to send messages, manage conversations, and control chat behavior programmatically from your backend.
Multi-Tenant Management API
Create and manage unlimited isolated CometChat instances via API. The infrastructure layer for SaaS products.
Data Migration API
Import legacy chat data and keep conversations synced during migration. Purpose-built, not a workaround.
The full picture, always
CometChat's plans are built around a straightforward premise: the things you'll need to run a great chat experience - moderation, notifications, analytics, compliance, migration support, infrastructure controls - are all foreseeable. So they are all included. The features in the table aren't upsells for edge cases. They're the product working the way a production-grade chat platform should.
If you're evaluating plans, the Build tier is the right place to start. It's free, fully featured, and gives you everything you need to know whether CometChat is the right fit - before you commit to anything.
From there, the path forward is based on what your usage and use case actually require. No artificial ceilings on the things that matter most.
Explore CometChat's plans at cometchat.com/pricing.
For questions about which plan fits your use case - reach out.
Team CometChat