Should you use RCS or SMS when leveraging connectivity solutions to communicate with your customers?
The answer is often going to be SMS, but RCS is an emerging alternative. Read on to understand why.
In this Telerivet article, we’ll cover:
SMS, or Short Message Service, is a protocol for sending up to 160 characters of text from one device to another. SMS uses a phone carrier's signal to deliver the message without requiring an internet connection and is one of the most popular communication channels in the entire world.
Most people are familiar with SMS—we all know SMS.
SMS was the first popular short messaging channel, emerging with the advent of mobile phones, and it remains one of the most widely used communication channels globally.
SMS is low cost, though it does have some cost from providers. SMS also only supports text, not multimedia content. This means that for certain purposes and among certain groups of people, it has been overtaken by app-based short messaging options, such as WhatsApp.
Despite this, SMS remains popular in every market and is generally both reliable and affordable.
In recent years, SMS has become functionally free for many users around the world, as those on prepaid phone contracts often receive a certain number of SMS messages, or unlimited SMS messages, included in their plan.
SMS is also highly popular for two-factor authentication, though it is not the most secure method available. The increasing move toward multi-factor authentication has opened up opportunities to combine SMS codes with other verification methods to provide compounded security.
SMS is easy for businesses and other organizations to access and use across different geographies and through different tools, which is why it remains one of the most popular ways for organizations to communicate with their customers, users, members, staff, or other stakeholders.
When someone says they’ve "sent a text," they are almost certainly referring to SMS—because SMS is the king of short-form messaging.
RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and refers to an alternative protocol for sending messages between mobile devices.
RCS uses an internet-based communication protocol, allowing users to send both text and media in different forms and varieties.
This approach delivers real-time messages, provided the mobile phone has a reliable internet connection, and it offers other real-time experiences within the system's user interface.
For example, RCS may display three animated dots when another user is typing. This feature increases the interactivity and engagement of the channel.
RCS was first deployed by Google across Android phones. It provides an alternative to Apple's iMessage system, which is only available on Apple platforms.
In the United States, iMessage is the most popular short messaging service. RCS is not as popular in the United States as iMessage, partly due to Android’s smaller market share. RCS also doesn’t replace iMessage in other markets, as mobile phone users in Android-heavy regions typically rely on WhatsApp or other local messaging apps.
Nonetheless, RCS is a very effective messaging tool that provides many benefits for users within the Android ecosystem.
With the release of iOS 18, Apple has updated its Messages app to support RCS as well. This means that instead of falling back to SMS or MMS when messaging an Android phone, it now defaults to RCS. However, users with older versions of iOS will be unable to use RCS until they upgrade to iOS 18.
SMS is so popular with organizations primarily because everyone uses it. With SMS, you are able to reach practically any mobile user in the world, regardless of whether they are on iOS, Android, or even using a Windows phone or an alternative platform.
Everyone has SMS, and everyone understands SMS. It has been the dominant form of short communication for decades.
Organizations likely also have it built into their systems.
SMS is predictable and reliable, and it works across geographies. However, it does come with the challenge that as you cross borders, you often need to cross providers.
For some large multinational companies, this means dealing with a series of providers in order to offer the same service. Platforms like Telerivet exist to make that process as easy as possible, allowing you to connect all your providers into one centralized platform.
Telerivet then acts as a command and control center where you can build campaigns and workflows that function as intended across each provider.
This makes your operations easier and turns SMS into a complex and interactive channel while still being easy to use.
That said, the primary advantage of SMS is that you can reach everyone.
While there is a great advantage to being able to message a customer on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, or another messaging app, that user does need to have installed that app already.
With SMS, you can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime.
So what does RCS bring to the table?
The primary point to make is its core feature set: RCS enables richer interactions compared to traditional SMS.
RCS allows businesses to send interactive messages with images, videos, carousels, and suggested actions or replies.
This means a more natural communication experience which mirrors the way modern consumers use chat apps. A huge portion of the market expects these kinds of interactions and messaging augmentations as standard.
With this in mind, leveraging those extra features by using RCS can keep your audience more engaged and boost your perceived brand value.
Branding value doesn’t end there.
Companies can use verified sender profiles, adding logos and brand colors to their messages. This helps to create a sense of security as well as improving the association with your brand. One of the key tenets of a successful omnichannel experience is maintaining a consistent and coherent presence in each interaction with the consumer across the communication ecosystem. These branding benefits help your brand maintain its best-practice approach.
RCS also scores highly when we look at analytics. RCS provides read receipts and more interaction data than is available by most SMS providers, allowing businesses to track engagement. Most businesses are used to interpreting and leveraging this data when sending email marketing campaigns, so being able to expand these capabilities easily to instant messaging channels already fits within normal company practices. This aids optimization and improved outcomes.
However, RCS does come with disadvantages.
The Apple situation is still unfolding. It’s promising that Apple has opened its ecosystem to RCS, but until we see sustained interoperability over time there will be hesitancy.
There is also a question mark around coverage. Not all carriers support RCS yet in different markets. We’ll have to see how providers react and whether we’ll find improved infrastructure to allow for greater RCS adoption.
When using RCS as a business, there are also some limitations and hurdles that don't apply when using SMS.
One limitation is that RCS business messaging doesn't provide a way for mobile phone users to initiate an interaction with your business by sending you an RCS message. In a scenario such as customer support where you expect the mobile phone user to initiate the conversation, the first message would need to be received over SMS or another channel before your business could start an RCS conversation. Mobile phone users can reply to your business via RCS once the conversation has started, but they cannot start conversations via RCS.
An additional hurdle: in order to start sending RCS messages as a business, it is currently necessary to navigate an approval process controlled by Google. Initially, businesses can only send RCS messages to specific test devices until they complete Google's process that involves brand verification and approval of your opt-in process and messaging flow. This requires you to create videos of your RCS messaging flow to submit to Google, or provide instructions for how Google's reviewers can trigger your RCS messaging flow themselves.
Up until very recently the answer would have been “no” but, as we’ve covered, the market is changing and RCS is an emerging business tool.
RCS didn’t seem to have been designed with enterprise business use cases in mind. Plus, interoperability between iOS and Android wasn’t prioritized… until very recently.
With the release of iOS 18, the landscape has shifted and RCS may prove to be a more important part of the messaging ecosystem in the future.
This is a major shift in attitudes to interoperability between the two platforms, and may partly be motivated by antitrust considerations in the US where iMessage is the highly dominant player. It may mean a change in how the industry as a whole approaches RCS over the coming months.
In the immediate term, however, this doesn’t change the fundamentals.
RCS is useful for consumer-to-consumer, informal, and social messaging, where Android users have access to a greater feature set, and the trusted text format is augmented with other communication types and opportunities.
RCS is not currently a popular channel for business communications, nor do companies tend to isolate RCS as a specific means of communication they intend to use.
That said, if you want to experiment, then perhaps it’s worth considering whether there’s an advantage to be found within the world of RCS.
Alternatively, SMS and other popular messaging apps that people already use are likely to serve you well.
If you want to do more than simple SMS then RCS is not the only solution. Here are a few areas to consider and look into.
MMS refers to Multimedia Messaging Service, which, like SMS, is a protocol which operates over a cell carrier network. But functionally, it appears much more similar to RCS, as it allows users to send images and other media formats to each other.
MMS is a reliable channel through which you can send images if that's important to your brand.
And you can use MMS within your Telerivet account, either through connectivity provided by Telerivet or through connectivity provided by an alternative source—a partner you are already working with—which you can port to Telerivet to control all connectivity from a central command hub.
However, MMS has some limitations compared to RCS. MMS messages have a size limit which varies per mobile network operator but is typically around 1 MB. As a result, when sending multimedia content like images, audio, or video, the content may need to be scaled down to fit within the MMS size limit. As a result, MMS media files may not appear with the quality you expect. In comparison, RCS supports media files up to 200 MB, more than enough for most content you typically want to send.
Like RCS, availability of MMS depends on the mobile network. While MMS is ubiquitous in the United States and Canada, it is less common in other countries. With the increasing adoption of RCS, it is possible RCS will become an option in many countries even where the mobile networks don't support MMS.
Telerivet integrates with various chat apps, including WhatsApp, Viber, and Messenger, allowing you to send and receive text messages with mobile phone users via these chat apps much the same as you can via SMS.
Telerivet's chat app integrations support sending multimedia content like images, audio, video, and documents, as well as sending quick reply buttons to make it easy for users to send a common response, and sending link buttons to make it easy for a user to take action on your website without showing the full URL in the text.
However, some chat apps have limitations compared to SMS:
So, it’s a trade-off, and it’s worth looking at what you need to get out of the channel first, and then assessing whether you can put into the channel everything necessary to achieve those goals.
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