Chat Is the New App Store

The distribution problem nobody talks about

Building software has never been easier. The tools are better, the frameworks are more powerful, and AI assistants can help you ship features in hours instead of weeks. But getting that software into the hands of users? That problem has only gotten harder.

If you want to reach people on their phones, you have two choices: the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Both take a 15-30% cut of everything you earn. Both require lengthy review processes where anonymous reviewers can reject your app for vague policy violations. Both can change the rules at any time, breaking your business overnight. And both have waiting lists, ranking algorithms, and discoverability challenges that make it nearly impossible for new products to get noticed.

The irony is painful: we have democratized the creation of software while keeping distribution locked behind two corporate gatekeepers. A solo developer can build a brilliant product in a weekend, but then spends months trying to get it approved, ranked, and noticed in stores that are actively hostile to new entrants.

This is not a new complaint. Developers have been frustrated with app stores for years. But until recently, there was no alternative. If you wanted to reach users on mobile, you played by Apple and Google's rules. Or you did not play at all.

Chat is infrastructure, not just communication

Here is what most people miss: chat platforms are not just messaging apps. They are programmable infrastructure that reaches billions of users who are already engaged, already authenticated, and already checking their phones dozens of times per day.

WhatsApp has over two billion active users. Telegram has 900 million. These are not just communication tools—they are distribution networks that dwarf traditional app stores in terms of engagement and reach. And unlike app stores, they are built on a fundamentally different model: instead of users coming to your software, your software comes to users.

When someone adds your bot to their WhatsApp or connects with your assistant on Telegram, you have achieved something that would cost thousands in user acquisition through traditional channels. You are in their pocket, in their notification tray, in the same place they go to talk to friends and family. The friction to engagement drops to nearly zero.

This is not theoretical. Businesses in Asia and Latin America have been building on chat platforms for years. In China, WeChat is effectively an operating system—people book flights, pay bills, order food, and manage their entire lives through chat interfaces. In Brazil and India, WhatsApp Business accounts handle customer service for millions of companies. The pattern is clear: chat is becoming the primary interface between businesses and customers.

The shift from apps to interactions

Traditional apps are heavy. You download them, grant them permissions, create accounts, learn their interfaces, and check them periodically. Each app is an island, disconnected from the others, competing for space on your home screen and attention in your day.

Chat-based software is light. There is nothing to download. The interface is just text—the most universal interface humans have ever created. You interact when you need something and ignore it when you do not. The software adapts to your communication style rather than forcing you to learn its paradigms.

For many use cases, this is simply better. You do not need a dedicated app to track a package, schedule an appointment, or get customer support. You need a quick interaction with something intelligent that can help you. Chat provides that without any of the overhead.

No approval, no fees, no gatekeepers

The economics of chat-based distribution are radically different from app stores. Consider what disappears when you build on chat instead of traditional mobile:

No app store review. You do not need to submit your software to Apple or Google and wait days or weeks for approval. You do not need to worry about arbitrary rejections or policy changes. You build your bot, deploy it to your server, and it is live. If you want to ship an update, you ship it. No gatekeepers standing between you and your users.

No 30% tax. Apple and Google take a substantial cut of all transactions processed through their app stores. On chat platforms, you process payments however you want. Stripe, PayPal, bank transfers, cryptocurrency—whatever works for your business. The entire economics of SaaS change when you are not giving away a third of your revenue to a distribution monopoly.

No discovery problem. App stores are winner-take-all environments where established players dominate search rankings and new entrants are invisible. Chat-based software spreads through existing relationships. A user who loves your service shares it with colleagues and friends. Distribution happens through conversation, not algorithms.

No platform lock-in. If you build an iOS app, you are locked to Apple. If you build an Android app, you are locked to Google. If you build a chat bot, you can deploy to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack, Discord, and a dozen other platforms simultaneously. Your users choose where they want to interact with you. You meet them where they are.

Features that belong in conversation

The power of chat-based software goes beyond distribution. Certain types of functionality are simply better when they live inside a conversation rather than a standalone app.

Customer service and support

When someone has a problem with your product, what do they want to do? They want to tell someone about it and get help. That is a conversation. Forcing them to download an app, log in, navigate to a support section, and fill out a form adds friction at exactly the moment when they are already frustrated.

A chat-based support system meets customers in their existing workflow. They send a message, explain their problem, and get help—all in the same interface they use to talk to everyone else. The conversation history persists. Context is preserved. And if they need follow-up help later, it is all right there.

Notifications and updates

Push notifications from apps are universally hated. They are intrusive, often irrelevant, and most users disable them entirely. But messages from contacts? Those get read. When your software communicates through chat, updates feel personal rather than promotional. A shipping notification from a chat bot feels like useful information. The same notification from an app feels like spam.

Scheduling and reminders

Calendar apps are powerful but disconnected from context. A chat-based assistant can schedule events conversationally—"remind me to call the dentist tomorrow at 2pm"—and then follow up in the same thread. The reminder comes as a message, and you can respond to it: "push it back an hour" or "cancel it." The interaction is natural because it mirrors how you would coordinate with a human assistant.

Approvals and workflows

Business processes often get stuck waiting for approvals. Expense reports, time off requests, document sign-offs—these require someone to notice an email or log into a system. Chat-based workflows put approval requests directly in front of decision-makers, where they cannot be ignored. A quick reply of "approved" or "rejected" keeps work moving without anyone needing to context-switch into a separate application.

Collaborative tasks

Many tasks are inherently social. Planning a trip with friends. Coordinating a team project. Organizing an event. These involve multiple people who need to share information, make decisions, and track progress. Chat is already where these conversations happen. Software that lives in chat can participate naturally—keeping track of decisions, surfacing relevant information, and helping the group stay coordinated.

AI makes chat-native software inevitable

The rise of large language models changes everything about what chat-based software can do. Before AI, chat bots were frustrating—limited to keyword matching, decision trees, and rigid scripts that broke the moment a user said something unexpected. They were objectively worse than well-designed graphical interfaces.

That constraint has evaporated. AI-powered assistants can understand natural language, maintain context across long conversations, reason about complex requests, and take meaningful action. The gap between talking to a bot and talking to a competent human assistant has narrowed dramatically.

This creates a new category of software that was not possible before: intelligent agents that live in your existing communication channels. Not apps you install and forget. Not websites you occasionally visit. Assistants that are always available, always in context, and always improving based on how you use them.

Integration without APIs

Traditional software integration is hard. You need APIs, authentication, data mapping, error handling, and ongoing maintenance. Most businesses run on dozens of disconnected tools because the cost of integrating them is too high.

AI agents can bridge these gaps. An intelligent assistant can interact with multiple systems on your behalf, translating between them, handling the complexity internally. You do not need to build integrations—you just tell the agent what you need, and it figures out how to make it happen.

This is particularly powerful for small businesses and individuals who cannot afford custom development. The same sophisticated workflows that require expensive enterprise software become accessible through a conversation with an AI assistant.

Critical scale already exists

One of the hardest parts of building any platform is achieving critical scale—getting enough users that the network effects kick in and growth becomes self-sustaining. App stores solved this problem by being bundled with phones. Everyone who bought an iPhone automatically became an App Store user.

Chat platforms have already achieved this scale, many times over. The users are there. The engagement is there. The infrastructure is there. You do not need to convince anyone to download anything or create a new account. You just need to reach people where they already spend their time.

Consider the numbers:

WhatsApp: 2+ billion active users worldwide, dominant in Europe, Latin America, and India. Users open the app an average of 23 times per day.

Telegram: 900 million users, particularly strong in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and among tech-savvy users globally. Offers the most developer-friendly bot platform available.

iMessage: The default for iPhone users in the US. Not programmable in the same way, but increasingly supporting rich interactions through extensions.

Slack and Discord: Hundreds of millions of users in professional and community contexts. Both have mature bot ecosystems and active developer communities.

WeChat: Over a billion users in China, where it has become the default interface for almost everything—payments, services, government interactions, commerce.

The distribution problem that makes app stores so powerful—access to users—is already solved on chat platforms. The question is not whether chat will become a major distribution channel. The question is how quickly businesses will realize they can bypass app stores entirely.

A new ecosystem emerges

When you combine AI-powered agents, chat-native distribution, and existing scale, something new emerges: an ecosystem of intelligent services that lives alongside human conversation rather than in isolated apps.

Imagine your primary chat application as the new home screen. Instead of a grid of app icons, you have a list of conversations—some with people, some with intelligent agents. You talk to your bank the same way you talk to your friend. You coordinate with your project management assistant the same way you coordinate with your team. The interface is uniform, but the capabilities are unlimited.

For businesses: reach customers where they are

If you run a business, chat-based agents let you maintain a presence wherever your customers prefer to communicate. You do not need to convince them to download your app or visit your website. You do not need to compete for attention in crowded app stores. You show up in the same place as their friends, family, and colleagues.

The customer acquisition economics improve dramatically. Instead of paying for app installs, you invite people to add your bot to a platform they already use. The friction is minimal, the retention is higher (because they are not managing another app), and the engagement is natural.

For individuals: unified assistance

As an individual, you benefit from having intelligent assistance integrated into your existing workflow. Your personal AI assistant can help you in the same context where you communicate with everyone else. No app switching. No learning new interfaces. Just conversation, augmented by intelligence.

This is what a personal agent like Molty enables. It lives in your messaging channels—WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, wherever you prefer. It knows your context, your preferences, your calendar. When you need something, you ask. When it needs to tell you something, it messages you. The boundary between human and AI communication blurs in the best possible way.

For developers: freedom from gatekeepers

If you build software, chat-native development offers something precious: freedom. You can ship when you want, charge what you want, and build what you want without worrying about app store policies. Your relationship with users is direct, not mediated by a platform that extracts rent and can revoke your access at any time.

The technical stack is also simpler. You do not need to maintain iOS and Android apps separately. You do not need to deal with native UI frameworks, app signing, or certificate management. A bot is just a server that responds to messages. The complexity lives in the intelligence, not the packaging.

The transition is already happening

This shift will not happen overnight, and traditional apps will not disappear. Some software genuinely benefits from rich graphical interfaces—photo editing, video games, complex creative tools. These will continue to exist as standalone applications.

But a vast category of software does not need those interfaces. Business tools, productivity apps, customer service, e-commerce, personal assistance—all of these can be delivered through conversation. And for many users, that delivery method is simply better: lighter, more natural, and more integrated into how they already work.

The businesses that move first will have significant advantages. They will build relationships with customers in channels that competitors are ignoring. They will avoid app store fees that eat into margins. They will ship faster because they are not waiting for approval from gatekeepers.

The businesses that wait will find themselves playing catch-up in a world where their competitors have already established presence where customers actually spend their time.

Getting started with chat-native software

If you are considering building chat-based services for your business, or setting up a personal AI assistant for yourself, here is where to begin:

Start with Telegram. It has the most developer-friendly bot platform, the best documentation, and the most flexibility. You can prototype quickly and expand to other platforms once you understand what works.

Focus on one use case. Do not try to build an everything-bot. Pick the single most valuable interaction for your users and make it excellent. Expand from there based on what users actually request.

Invest in AI integration. The difference between a frustrating bot and a delightful assistant is intelligence. Modern language models can handle natural conversation, understand context, and provide genuinely useful responses. Build on that capability.

Think about persistence. Unlike traditional apps, chat history is visible to users. Your bot's messages become part of their conversation record. Design for that—messages should be useful to refer back to, not just transient interactions.

Respect the medium. Chat is personal. People interact with bots the same way they interact with humans. Do not be spammy, do not be pushy, and do not send messages that feel like marketing. Be helpful, concise, and human.