One-to-one and group calling built on a managed real-time vendor — signalling, permissions, background behaviour, billing per minute and the edge cases that make calls feel unreliable.
WebRTC · Agora · LiveKit · Zego · 1:1 and group calls
Rolling your own WebRTC stack means TURN servers, scaling, recording and global routing — months of infrastructure work before the first call. Managed vendors like Agora, LiveKit or Zego handle media transport and let the product focus on the experience.
Self-hosting makes sense when data residency or per-minute cost at very high volume demands it. For most products, managed is the right first answer.
A call is a state machine: invite, ring, accept, connect, reconnect, end. Each state needs a record on your backend and a matching state in both apps. Miss one and users get stuck on a calling screen after the other side hung up.
Push notifications are usually needed to wake a backgrounded app, with the platform limits that implies — especially on iOS.
Paid calls need balance checks before connection, per-minute metering, grace periods for network drops and a clear end state. Metering on the client alone lets users disconnect the network to avoid charges.
I keep the authoritative call record on the server, with the vendor's usage events as a cross-check.
Camera and microphone permissions, audio routing to speaker or earpiece, Bluetooth handling, screen sharing, mute states and reconnection after a tunnel all affect whether a call feels professional.
Network quality indicators and graceful degradation matter more than maximum resolution.
Explore examples of mobile, Smart TV and integrated product work.
Agora and Zego are common for quick integration and global coverage; LiveKit suits teams that want more control or self-hosting. The right pick depends on group size, recording needs, data residency and per-minute cost.
Partially. Incoming calls can wake an app using push notifications, but iOS restricts background behaviour unless you use CallKit with VoIP push. That needs to be designed early, not bolted on.
Yes. Balance checks happen before connection and duration is tracked server-side, with the vendor's usage events used as a cross-check.
