iOS App Community & Private Chat

I have a live social-media application on iOS and now want to embed real-time communication—both public community rooms and one-to-one private messages—directly inside it. Community chat and private messaging are equally important to me, so they need to feel cohesive, share the same design language, and use a single, scalable back-end.

Community rooms must let any user spin up a new group, while admins or moderators alone can rename, archive, remove members, or delete content. Granular, role-based tools (kick, mute, ban) should be available from a simple long-press or overflow menu so moderation can happen on-the-go.

Private messaging should launch from any profile, show typing indicators, unread counts, and push notifications, and deliver text in under a second under normal network conditions.

My current stack is Swift/SwiftUI in Xcode 15. I am open to Firebase, Stream, Sendbird, or another battle-tested chat SDK—you can suggest what best suits growth and security, as long as it supports end-to-end encryption and easy future feature expansion (voice notes, media, reactions).

Deliverables
• Integrated community and direct-message modules compiling in the existing target
• UI that inherits my colours and typography, with smooth transitions and native gestures
• Full role-based moderation working on a TestFlight build
• Brief but clear implementation notes so my in-house dev can maintain and extend the feature

Acceptance criteria
• No crashes or memory leaks in a 30-minute stress test with 100 simulated users
• Sub-second round-trip message delivery on Wi-Fi
• New screens meet Apple HIG and pass App Store review without issues

Include in your proposal the SDK you’d use, a milestone outline, and a link to at least one iOS app where you delivered similar chat functionality.