Billing & Tax Transparency.

Nothing should be a surprise.

Business messaging in the United States has a dirty little secret: almost nobody can tell you, in advance, what a text message will actually cost. Between the carriers, the registries, the aggregators, and a tax code with a thousand moving parts, the simple act of sending a message has been turned into one of the most confusing line items on your bill. SimplyRCS was built to end that. We show you every fee, every surcharge, and an estimate of every tax — before you ever hit send. What you see is what you pay.

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Rates and tax figures last verified June 2026.

The software is free with any sender — app, API, bots, inbox, and analytics included. Your only platform cost is the verified RCS Agent: a flat $250/month, all-in. Carrier, registry, and tax pass-throughs are itemized at cost, never marked up.

Why your messaging bill makes no sense.

A single business text passes through a chain of companies, and almost every one of them takes a piece. By the time a message reaches your customer, its “price” has been built up from layers most providers never bother to explain:

• The per-message rate — the part you were quoted, and usually the only part you were quoted.
• Carrier pass-through surcharges — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and US Cellular each levy their own per-message fee on business traffic. They’re non-negotiable, they vary by carrier, and they’re charged on top of the message rate.
• Registry fees — before you can send at all, US carriers require you to register through The Campaign Registry: a brand-registration fee, a brand-vetting fee, a per-campaign vetting fee, and a recurring monthly fee for every campaign you run.
• RCS sender fees — carriers also charge to register and maintain a verified RCS sender, often billed annually per sender.
• Number and short-code costs — long-code rentals, toll-free verification, or a short-code lease that can run into the hundreds per month.
• The penalty fees — failed-message charges, surcharges for unregistered traffic, fees to change a sender profile you already paid to create.

Each gatekeeper is looking for its small squeeze. Individually the charges look minor; stacked together and left unexplained, they turn a predictable expense into a monthly guessing game. Most platforms are happy to leave it that way — the confusion hides the markup.

And then there are the taxes.

If the fees are confusing, US telecom taxes are in a category of their own. America runs one of the most complicated communications-tax systems on earth — so complicated that an entire industry exists for the sole purpose of helping companies figure out what they owe. We are not anti-tax. We just think it’s a little absurd that working out the tax on a text message can require specialized software, a compliance team, and a quarterly subscription to keep up.

Here is the landscape a messaging bill sits inside:

• The Federal Universal Service Fund (USF) — a federal surcharge reset by the FCC every quarter. The contribution factor has climbed from roughly 17% a decade ago to about 37% in 2026 — a rate that changes four times a year, before any state touches it.
• State USF and relay-service fees — most states run their own funds on top of the federal one, each set by its own commission, each with its own rate.
• E911 (and now 988) surcharges — imposed at the state level, often again at the county level, and sometimes again at the city level — as a flat per-line fee in one place and a percentage in the next.
• State and local communications and sales taxes — fifty states, thousands of local jurisdictions, and rules that differ on whether messaging is even taxable, and how.
• Tax on tax — in some states a surcharge is calculated on an amount that already includes another tax, so the math literally compounds on itself.

None of it holds still. The federal rate changes quarterly; state and local rates change constantly; and the right amount depends on jurisdictions mapped down to the ZIP code. It is, genuinely, a maze. The difference is what your provider does about it: bury it in a vague “taxes & fees” blob at the bottom of an invoice — or show you the pieces and estimate them up front. We chose the second one.

Anatomy of a SimplyRCS bill.

When you check out, you don’t get a single mystery number. You get an itemized receipt — every line named, every line explained, and your taxes and surcharges estimated before you commit.

Here’s the shape of it (illustrative figures; your quote shows your exact numbers):

Illustrative only — not a quote. The point isn’t the numbers; it’s that you can see every one of them, with an arrow pointing at a plain-English explanation, before you spend a dollar.

The SimplyRCS transparency promise.

Transparency isn’t a marketing line for us — it’s a feature we built into the product. Here is what we commit to, on every account:

1. What you see is what you pay. The number at checkout is the number on your invoice. No fine print, no end-of-month surprises.
2. Every fee is itemized and explained. Message cost, agent fee, carrier pass-through, registry fees, and taxes each get their own line — in plain English, not telecom code.
3. We estimate your taxes before you commit. You see an honest estimate of USF, state/local, and E911 charges up front, then we reconcile the exact amount on the invoice.
4. Carrier and government charges are passed through, never marked up. Pass-through fees sit on their own line so you can always tell what’s ours from what’s the carrier’s or the government’s.
5. Published rates, no software fee. No messaging tiers, no per-interaction surcharges, and rich RCS is priced the same as basic text. Your only recurring platform cost is the flat $250/month verified RCS Agent — everything else is usage.
6. No software fee, no feature tiers, no change fees. The app, the API, and every feature are included with your RCS Agent — things other providers charge for, we don’t.
7. One simple agent fee, everything included. A flat $250/month per RCS Agent — and the software is the same price whether you use the app or the API. Optional AI packages are priced separately, just as plainly.

Frequently asked.

Q. Why is there tax on a text message at all?

A. Because messaging is classified as a telecommunications service, it can be subject to the same federal and state telecom taxes and surcharges as other carrier services — the Universal Service Fund, state communications taxes, and E911 fees among them. Exactly which apply depends on your jurisdiction and use case, which is why we estimate them for you up front.

Q. What is a carrier pass-through fee?

A. It’s a per-message fee the mobile carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular) charge for delivering business traffic on their networks. Every provider pays it. We pass it through with no markup and show it on its own line, rather than blending it into your message rate.

Q. Will my bill change from month to month?

A. Your message and platform costs are predictable. The variable parts are usage and the government-set tax and surcharge rates — the federal USF rate, for example, is reset quarterly. We estimate these up front and reconcile the exact figures on your invoice, so changes are explained, never hidden.

Q. What are 10DLC and Campaign Registry fees?

A. Before any business can text US numbers, carriers require registration through The Campaign Registry — a brand fee, a per-campaign vetting fee, and a recurring monthly campaign fee. These are industry-wide pass-through charges. We itemize them so you can see they’re the registry’s fees, not ours.

Q. What does the $250/month cover?

A. The $250/month is per RCS Agent — your verified sender — and it includes the app, the API, bots, the inbox, analytics, and human support. There is no separate platform or software fee. Messaging is billed at carrier rates on top, carrier and registry fees are passed through at cost on their own lines, and government taxes are shown separately and estimated up front.

Q. Do I pay more to use the app instead of the API?

A. No. The application and the full API are the same price. We don’t charge extra for the software, and every feature is included for every account.

Ready to see your own numbers?

Tell us your volume and channels and we'll send an itemized estimate — every line, every fee, before you spend a dollar.

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