How do you send RCS messages to customers?

Q: How do you send RCS messages to customers?

You cannot send business RCS from a phone. It goes through a registered RCS agent on a messaging platform: you register your brand, get a verified sender approved by Google and the carriers, collect opt-in, then send from a dashboard or an API with automatic SMS fallback for anyone who cannot receive RCS. Approval is the long pole, typically one to three weeks.

That last point is the one worth internalising before anything else. Sending an RCS business message is not a harder version of sending a text, it is a different act with a gate in front of it. The gate exists because RCS puts your brand name, logo, and a verification checkmark on the message, and none of that would be worth anything if any sender could claim it.

The five steps, in the order they actually happen

Register the brand. Your legal business name, address, website, and contact details, matching public records. Most delays trace back to a mismatch here.
Create and submit the RCS agent. The agent is the sender: its display name, logo, colour, description, and the use case it is approved for. See what an RBM agent is.
Get verified. Google and the carriers review the agent. Regulated categories take longer, and an agent approved for one use case cannot legitimately be used for another.
Register 10DLC for the fallback path. Anyone who cannot receive RCS gets SMS, and that SMS rides a registered 10-digit number. 10DLC vs RCS explains why both layers are needed.
Collect opt-in, then send. Consent is per channel and has to be recorded. How RCS consent works covers what counts.

Sending from a dashboard versus sending from an API

Once approved, there are two routes and most programmes use both.

A dashboard send is the right tool for campaigns: upload or segment an audience, build the message, preview it as it will render on a real handset, schedule it, and read the delivered, read, and tap results afterwards. No engineering time is required, which matters because the people who own campaign timing are usually not developers.

An API send is the right tool for triggered messages: order confirmations, appointment reminders, delivery updates, one-time passcodes. Your system posts a message to the endpoint and handles the asynchronous delivery, read, and suggestion-tap events on a webhook. The RCS API overview has the request shapes and the webhook design notes.

The thing to check when comparing providers is whether both routes cost the same and expose the same features. On SimplyRCS they do, including automatic RCS to MMS to SMS fallback on every send.

What you can actually send

Plain text with a row of tappable suggestion chips, a standalone rich card with an image, title, description and buttons, or a carousel of two to ten cards. Suggestions come in two kinds: a suggested reply, which sends a token back to your webhook, and a suggested action, which opens a URL, dials a number, opens a map, or creates a calendar entry. RCS message formats shows the payloads.

The most common first-campaign mistake is treating a rich card as a place to put a lot of text. It is not. The card earns its keep through the image and the buttons, and the buttons are where the measurable behaviour happens.

What it costs and what you should measure

RCS is priced per message, with rich media priced above basic text, plus Google's RBM fees. Our full US rate card is published on the pricing page rather than quoted here, because compare-page pricing drifts and the rate card does not.

On measurement, start with three numbers: the share of your audience that was RCS-capable at send time, the delivered-to-read gap, and the tap rate on your primary suggestion. The first tells you how much of your list you are reaching richly, the second tells you whether your send time is right, and the third is the only one that maps to revenue.

Key facts

Business RCS requires a verified agent approved by Google and the carriers; it cannot be sent from a handset or an unregistered number.
Verification typically runs one to three weeks, and longer for regulated use cases.
10DLC registration is still needed, because it carries the SMS fallback for non-RCS recipients.
Sends go out from a dashboard for campaigns or an API for triggered messages, with the same fallback behaviour either way.
SimplyRCS handles brand registration, 10DLC, and RCS carrier approval for you, and prices dashboard and API sends identically.

Frequently asked

Can you send RCS messages from a phone?

Not as a business. Person-to-person RCS works from any modern handset, but business messaging requires a registered RCS agent approved by Google and the carriers, sent from a messaging platform. That gate is what makes the verified brand name, logo, and checkmark meaningful, since otherwise any sender could claim them.

How long does it take to start sending RCS?

Carrier and Google review of the RCS agent is the long pole and typically runs one to three weeks, longer for regulated categories. Brand registration is faster. Start 10DLC registration and RCS agent verification in parallel rather than in sequence, because they are separate submissions reviewed by different parties.

Do you need a developer to send RCS messages?

Not for campaigns. A dashboard send covers audience selection, message building, handset preview, scheduling, and reporting with no engineering time. A developer is needed for triggered messages such as order updates or one-time passcodes, which go through the API and return delivery and read events on a webhook.

Do you still need 10DLC if you send RCS?

Yes. Anyone who cannot receive RCS gets the message as SMS instead, and that fallback rides a registered 10-digit number. Without brand and campaign registration the fallback leg is filtered, so the recipients least likely to have RCS are the ones most likely to miss the message entirely.