Infobip RCS vs SimplyRCS, Compared (2026)

Infobip sells RCS as one channel inside a much larger omnichannel suite. You reach it through the same Messages API that carries Infobip's SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, and email traffic, or through Moments if you want campaigns built in a visual tool rather than in code. Rich cards, carousels, and suggested actions are all supported.

Where Infobip RCS is genuinely strong

Reach is the real product. Infobip holds direct operator connections across sixty-plus countries, and one contract and one API cover all of them. The enterprise tooling around the channel is mature too: Conversations for agent-handled threads, Moments for orchestration, and a CDP underneath.

Where it gets expensive or slow

Infobip does not publish RCS dollar rates. Every rate is a quote, which means the number depends on your volume, your markets, and your negotiating position rather than on a rate card you can check. What the RCS pricing page does publish is guidance relative to SMS: RCS Basic "often priced similarly to SMS", a Single message "around 20-30% higher", and Conversational RCS "about twice the price of SMS" for a 24-hour session, with only delivered messages billed. That tells you the shape of a quote but not its size, because the SMS price it is measured against is itself quoted.

Onboarding is an enterprise process rather than a signup, and no US onboarding timeline, setup fee or support terms are published. Neither is unusual at that scale, but both matter if you are a US team that wants to be live in weeks.

What Infobip says about carrier fees

Very little, and that is the finding. US carriers levy their own per-message surcharges on A2P traffic, and those fees are real money at volume: on a 50,000-message month they are the second largest line on our own invoice after the messages themselves. Whether a provider passes them through at cost, marks them up, or blends them into a headline rate changes the total substantially.

Infobip's public RCS pricing page does not state which of those it does. The page gives no dollar rates; it describes RCS prices relative to SMS (Basic "often priced similarly to SMS", Single "around 20-30% higher", Conversational "about twice the price of SMS") and says only delivered messages are billed. None of that says whether carrier surcharges are inside the relative figure or added on top, so with no published dollar rate at all, the carrier component of an Infobip quote cannot be checked from outside.

So ask for it explicitly, and ask in these terms: are US carrier surcharges passed through at cost or marked up, do they appear as their own line on the invoice or inside the per-message rate, and which carriers' fees are included in the quoted number. A quote that answers all three is comparable to a published rate card. One that does not is a single number you cannot decompose.

Our own answer is on the billing transparency page: carrier surcharges are passed through at cost, on their own invoice line, with no markup, and the sample bill shows them itemised against a 50,000-message month.

How SimplyRCS differs on the same channel

The RCS itself is the same standard, the same verified sender, the same rich cards in the same Google Messages inbox. What differs is everything around it. SimplyRCS is US-only and publishes every rate on the pricing page, charges no per-interaction fee, includes the campaign builder and shared inbox rather than licensing them as enterprise modules, and prepares and files your brand, campaign, and RCS agent registrations for you. Infobip covers markets from Jakarta to Lagos; SimplyRCS covers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, on a bill you can predict.

Infobip exposes RCS as one channel inside its omnichannel messaging API, alongside SMS, WhatsApp, email and voice, and the same suite carries Moments for campaigns and Answers for chatbots. The API is broad and global; access, pricing and onboarding are enterprise: quote-priced and contracted. The SimplyRCS API is narrower on purpose. It covers RCS, SMS and MMS for US carriers from one verified sender, with a public OpenAPI reference, self-serve keys, published per-message rates and no per-interaction fee, and it is the same interface the app uses. Infobip's API spans many countries and channels under one contract; the SimplyRCS API covers US carriers on a rate card you can read. The RCS API overview explains how both wrap Google's RBM API.

SimplyRCS ports the US long codes, toll-free numbers and short codes you run through Infobip; numbers in other countries stay with Infobip, because SimplyRCS is US-only. The registrations behind each US number stay behind: 10DLC brand and campaign filings and the verified RCS agent are tied to the provider that filed them, so SimplyRCS re-files the brand, the campaigns and the RCS sender for you rather than asking your team to run a second enterprise onboarding.

Infobip and SimplyRCS can run in parallel during cutover, with no overlap charge from SimplyRCS, so US traffic moves when the new registrations clear and the rest of an Infobip contract carries on unchanged. Long codes and toll-free numbers carry no carrier migration fee. Short-code migrations carry carrier-set fees passed through at cost: $500 T-Mobile, $250 Verizon, $150 Claro.

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