[garygao]

iMessage for Business is very restrictive and has a really long approval process. On top of this, it also sends gray bubbles and doesn't allow any outbound, which prevents consented outbound use cases such as form fill text back.

[satvikpendem]

> iMessage for Business is very restrictive and has a really long approval process

For good reason, so companies don't abuse it.

[monocularvision]

“Consented outbound use cases”

This is top-of-the-line corporate jargon.

[angulardragon03]

> also sends gray bubbles

Incoming messages are _always_ gray on iOS, irrespective of the use of iMessage or SMS. Your solution is not any different in this regard.

[542458]

It looks like in iMessage for business, the phone’s user’s outbound messages show as dark grey (as opposed to normal iMessage and SMS/RCS which show outbound messages as blue and green respectively). I assume this is supposed to communicate that you’re talking to a different sort of entity, not a normal person on a phone.

Personally I don’t see why you’d care. My business isn’t trying to pretend to be a normal person using a phone, so why would it matter?

https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/

[smt88]

I’ve never seen a gray bubble and have received incoming messages from all different types of accounts

[collinrapp]

Then there’s a misunderstanding here. I have an iPhone. When I open my Messages app and view a conversation with someone with an iPhone, my outbound messages are blue and their messages to me are gray. When I open a conversation with a non-iPhone user, my outbound messages are green and their messages to me are still gray. Are you sure you’ve never received a incoming gray message? Because that doesn’t seem possible, unless you’re talking about something other than what I and the person you responded to are talking about.

As far as I can tell, the OP’s insistence that their service won’t send gray messages seems entirely disconnected from reality.

[garygao]

yes, what I originally meant was that Apple iMessage for Business has gray bubbles for the messages that you're sending (or the ones that would normally be blue)

[ada1981]

Incorrect.

[jparsons67]

"iMessage for Business" doesn't exist as an Apple product, since they don't support business messaging in iMessage. They have a service called "Apple Messages for Business." They didn't use the iMessage name, presumably because it's a totally different service.

https://register.apple.com/messages

Looking at their approval process, it is involved because Apple is focused on their customers, who are the end-users. They want it to be "great." Just letting any random company connect to their API and blast Apple users isn't going to fly. Users would hate it, and it would destroy their trust in the channel. Spammers and scammers ruined SMS. Nobody wants that to happen to the other channels too, especially not Apple.

[rafram]

I can’t recall the last time I received an automated SMS that I’d say was “consented.” Not that that’s an adjective I’d ever use.