Top 5 Things to Check When Selecting a Video Call API

A video call can make or break your user experience. Whether it's a patient meeting a clinician, a candidate interviewing for a new role, or a buyer connecting with a seller, users rarely separate the quality of the video experience from the quality of your product itself.

That's why choosing a video call API has become one of the most important infrastructure decisions for teams building virtual experiences. The platform choice often has direct consequences for conversion rates, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, compliance, and product growth.

Fortunately, any potential issues can be avoided by evaluating the right criteria up front. While features often take priority, choosing a good video call platform usually depends on additional considerations.

So here are 5 major things to look out for to act as a starting point when evaluating a video call API. Use this guide to help shortlist vendors for full evaluation and initial testing.

1. Reliability and call quality

Nothing matters more than whether your users can actually have a successful conversation.

A feature-rich API won't compensate for dropped calls, frozen video, poor audio, or connectivity issues. For businesses where video is central to the customer experience, reliability directly impacts user satisfaction, retention, and revenue.

It’s important to assess this from two sides:

Firstly, what are the vendors uptime and SLA commitments?

When evaluating providers, ask:

• What uptime guarantees are offered?

• Is the infrastructure distributed globally?

• Are there analytics and diagnostics available to identify performance problems?

• Has there been any recent outages or critical incidents?

• Are there any concurrency limits?

Whereby's infrastructure includes a globally distributed server network and a 99.9% uptime SLA designed to support reliable video experiences at scale.

Secondly, how does their call quality stack up?

Some handy questions include:

• How does the platform perform in low-bandwidth environments?

• Is it compatible across device types?

• What metrics can you provide around packet loss, jitter and latency?

• What tools are available for monitoring call quality and troubleshooting issues?

It's worth running extensive testing across different devices, browsers, network conditions, and geographies before making a final decision.

Just as important as call quality is visibility into what happens during a call. In the event that users report issues or when your team needs to understand usage trends, specific analytics can significantly help.

So ensure your video call platform provider offers session-level insights, usage data and quality metrics like packet loss and reconnections.

These insights benefit other teams beyond the engineering teams. For example, Product managers can identify adoption trends, customer success teams can proactively address issues, and the finance team can properly plan for the next billing cycle.

2. Security and compliance

If your product is in healthcare, financial services, legal, or any other regulated industry, security and compliance aren't video call features you evaluate later. They're gating criteria from day one.

At the basic level, try to understand:

• How media is encrypted, both in transit and (if applicable) at rest

• Whether there’s enough certifications and compliance that aligns with your regulatory obligations (For example, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001)

• How are recordings, transcripts, and participant data handled?

• Whether the vendor will sign the agreements you need (for example, a Business Associate Agreement for HIPAA)

Compliance requirements vary by industry and geography, but selecting a provider with a strong security foundation can reduce future risk and simplify procurement processes.

Whereby Embedded, for example, is GDPR-compliant, ISO 27001-certified, and offers HIPAA-compliant configurations and a BAA (at no extra cost to Enterprise customers).

3. Vendor stability and product focus

Features and pricing matter, but so does the provider's long-term commitment to video.

Many video call APIs are part of larger communications platforms that also offer SMS, voice, or chat. In these cases, video can become just one product among many, making it vulnerable to shifting priorities, pricing changes, or roadmap decisions.

We’ve seen this play out with Twilio’s video product changes, where teams had to suddenly start evaluating other video call APIs.

If your product depends on a vendor's video capability and that vendor deprioritizes it, you could be facing an unplanned migration with all the engineering cost, QA cycles, and user disruption that comes with it.

That's why it's worth assessing not just what a platform offers today, but how it supports customers over time. Ask:

• Is video a core part of the company's business?

• How are versioning and deprecations handled?

• Is backward compatibility maintained, and how frequently?

• Does the provider have a strong track record of ongoing investment in video?

Video call providers that are solely focused on video, like Whereby with 13+ years of experience focused solely on building WebRTC video call solutions, tend to invest more consistently in reliability, innovation, and long-term platform stability.

For teams building products designed to last, choosing a video-first provider like Whereby can help reduce future risk and ensure you're not rebuilding critical parts of your application every other year.

4. The end-user experience

The best video call is the one users can join immediately, no matter their age, digital literacy or accessibility needs. Every extra step, like downloads, account creation, confusing permissions, or unfamiliar interfaces, creates friction that can reduce participation and increase drop-off. Huli for example noted a 20% drop in no-shows when they switched to a simpler workflow using Whereby.

A strong video call API should make it easy for users to:

• Join directly from a browser

• Complete pre-call device and connectivity checks

• Connect with minimal setup and navigate an intuitive interface

• Access calls across all devices and browsers

Accessibility is a key consideration. Features such as live captions, keyboard navigation, screen reader support, and accessible interfaces help ensure more users can participate successfully, while also improving the experience in everyday scenarios like noisy environments or poor audio conditions. This is more than a compliance checkbox. Selecting an accessibility focused vendor better serves older or less tech-savvy patient populations from the outset.

Just as importantly, video should feel like a natural part of your product. So look for providers that offer control over branding and UI elements so the experience aligns with your product and users.

Finally, don't overlook the pre-call experience. Many support issues originate before a call even starts, from blocked camera permissions to incorrect audio settings. Built-in device checks can help users resolve these problems before they become frustrations.

5. Flexibility, customization, and developer experience

The right video API should meet your needs today without limiting what's possible tomorrow.

Some teams need a fully branded video experience that can be embedded in days. Others require deeper control over layouts, room management, participant permissions, and custom workflows. As your product evolves, your video infrastructure should be able to evolve with it.

When evaluating providers, consider:

• How much customization is available?

• Can you apply your own branding and control the user experience, particularly features?

• Are APIs and SDKs available for deeper customization?

• How easily can video be integrated into existing workflows?

• Can the platform support future requirements and new use cases?

• Are there rate limits or concurrent session caps?

• How does the pricing adjust as we scale?

• Are there volume discounts and flexible pricing options available to suit our use case?

Developer experience is equally important. Even the most powerful API becomes a liability if it takes months to implement. Look for clear documentation, well-maintained SDKs, robust APIs and webhooks, and pre-built components that reduce time to implement.

It's also worth considering where your product roadmap is headed. Features such as recording, transcription, and AI-powered workflows are becoming increasingly common.

So whether you're exploring automated summaries, conversational insights, or AI meeting assistants, choosing a platform like Whereby that supports these capabilities can help future-proof your product and avoid costly migrations later.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately, choosing a video call API is about finding the right balance between reliability, security, user experience, flexibility, and ease of implementation.

When those foundations are in place, video becomes an invisible part of your product experience, allowing teams to focus on delivering value rather than managing infrastructure.

Whereby is built to help teams deliver reliable, secure, and scalable video experiences, combining browser-based access, enterprise-grade reliability, strong privacy standards, and flexible integration options that support both rapid deployment and long-term growth.

Test our free plan to see why we’re the trusted video call API for global teams.