SimplyRCS vs RCS Studio by Vibes, Compared (2026)

Vibes publishes its RCS Studio plans, which is unusual in this category and worth crediting. The thing to notice is the unit: the plans are priced by monthly active users, not by message, and carrier costs sit inside the plan price.

Figures above are Vibes' published US figures, read from vibes.com/rcsstudio on 7 October 2026. Verify current pricing with Vibes directly.

Reading the plans

RCS Studio starts at $149 a month; SimplyRCS has no monthly platform fee, only a one-time $250 RCS Sender ID setup and review per sender (waived with Premium Support). Vibes' page also lists two one-time ecosystem fees, $100 to verify the business and $500 to provision the agent on all carriers, so the first month on Starter costs $749, then $149 a month after that. Ours is the $250 RCS Sender ID setup and review before the carrier vetting and activation charges that we pass through at cost, then nothing monthly beyond messages and numbers.

The plan line to watch is monthly active users. Starter covers up to 1,000; Growth, at $499 a month, covers 5,000 and includes 50,000 messages; above that, Enterprise is a custom quote. For scale, 50,000 RCS text segments on SimplyRCS cost $195 and 50,000 card or media messages $750, before carrier fees at cost. Our own pricing has no user line to cross: the software is free, with the app, the API and every feature included at any volume, and messages bill on two published rates, $0.0039 per text segment and $0.0150 for any card or anything carrying media.

The second thing to check is how carrier costs appear. Absorbing them into a monthly price is simpler to read but makes it harder to see what you are actually paying as volume grows, which is the reason we itemise every surcharge on its own line instead. The method is set out in billing transparency, our rates are on the pricing page, and the category-wide breakdown is in RCS pricing by provider.

Vibes does publish developer documentation for RCS. Its Vibes Connect developer portal documents an RCS for Business API for rich, branded messages with carousels, images, quick replies and suggested actions, and an HTTP message API with callbacks. The portal says it is for Vibes Connect aggregation customers, and access is behind a login rather than a self-serve key, so the API is a different product from the self-serve RCS Studio tool this page compares.

The difference on our side is where the API sits, not whether it exists. On SimplyRCS the REST API, signed webhooks, the OpenAPI description and self-serve API keys are included in the same free software as the app, so a marketing team and an engineering team work from one account at one price, and there is an MCP server so an AI agent can send and read messages through the same interface. If your programme is API-first, the developer page has the request shapes; if it is app-first, the API is there when you need it without a second product or a second contract.

RCS Studio is an RCS product, so the move centres on the agent rather than on phone numbers. The verified RCS agent Vibes provisioned is tied to the provider that provisioned it and does not move, and the same is true of any 10DLC brand and campaign registrations, so SimplyRCS re-files the brand, campaigns and RCS sender for you. Any long codes, toll-free numbers or short codes the programme runs on for SMS port to SimplyRCS: long codes through standard US number portability, toll-free by a RespOrg change, short codes through a carrier migration.

Both providers run in parallel during cutover, and SimplyRCS makes no overlap charge for that period. Long codes and toll-free numbers carry no carrier migration fee. Short-code migrations carry carrier-set fees, passed through at cost: $500 for T-Mobile, $250 for Verizon and $150 for Claro.

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