Founder of Clerk Chat here, I work with RCS for Business day in and day out and know the protocol inside and out.
A lot of the criticism in this thread is fair from a client / handset perspective, but it’s important to separate consumer RCS from RCS for Business. On the business side, RCS is actually a very powerful, well-designed protocol with massive potential when used the way it was intended: verified senders, conversational flows, and rich interactions at scale.
At Clerk Chat, we’re leading the way on conversational RCS, not just blasting messages, but enabling real two-way conversations that feel native, secure, and useful. Yes, Google is the gatekeeper as well as carriers today, but that’s also what enables trust, verification, and deliverability at global scale. When you work with the ecosystem instead of against it, it’s surprisingly effective.
We’re investing heavily in RCS because we believe it’s the natural evolution of business messaging beyond SMS. For companies that want to engage users where they already are with rich UI, fast responses, and verified identity, RCS is hard to beat.
If you’re interested in exploring what’s actually possible with RCS for Business today, feel free to reach out. Happy to enable folks and share real-world learnings.
Clerk is built natively for Slack. You don't need to rely on a separate webapp for SMS functionality. Anyone from your team is able to communicate to clients directly from the Slack interface they use every day.
I've seen lots of posts about folks inquiring about enabling SMS inside of Slack. Sure there are tools out there which force you to create an account and signup but nothing has been built natively for Slack. That is, you guessed it - until now!
We've been building this native Slack app for the last year after we couldn't find an affordable SMS-to-Slack solution. The idea came when my friend who was looking for a way to leverage SMS for her clinic but didn't want a whole new platform to communicate with her patients outside of slack. Email was just not effective, especially given the fact that 98% of text messages are read and replied to within FIVE minutes.
Clerk was born from 4 simple premises:
1. If you have customers or team members out of the office, one of the best ways to get your message in front of them is through text.
2. Now that almost everyone has a smartphone, SMS and MMS are becoming consumers’ and employees’ preferred way of connecting with companies and brands.
3. But choosing a platform for this kind of service isn’t always easy.
4. We’re already logged in to emails, CRM tools, website backends – the list is endless.
I am shamelessly using Hacker News to ask for help for any Slack forums or outlets to get the word out. Places that would be relevant as I don't want to be spammy. Any help I get I will personally reply and see if I can help you along your own entrepreneurial journey :)
A lot of the criticism in this thread is fair from a client / handset perspective, but it’s important to separate consumer RCS from RCS for Business. On the business side, RCS is actually a very powerful, well-designed protocol with massive potential when used the way it was intended: verified senders, conversational flows, and rich interactions at scale.
At Clerk Chat, we’re leading the way on conversational RCS, not just blasting messages, but enabling real two-way conversations that feel native, secure, and useful. Yes, Google is the gatekeeper as well as carriers today, but that’s also what enables trust, verification, and deliverability at global scale. When you work with the ecosystem instead of against it, it’s surprisingly effective.
We’re investing heavily in RCS because we believe it’s the natural evolution of business messaging beyond SMS. For companies that want to engage users where they already are with rich UI, fast responses, and verified identity, RCS is hard to beat.
If you’re interested in exploring what’s actually possible with RCS for Business today, feel free to reach out. Happy to enable folks and share real-world learnings.
Igor, Founder @ Clerk Chat