> We rotate sending identities, warm them gradually, and cap volume per identity per day to stay well below the heuristics Apple uses to throttle abusive senders. Anyone promising \"unlimited blast\" volume is one ban away from disappearing.<p>If you are violating Apple's policies, even if they cannot identify each account you create, can they not simply ban you as a legal entity from using their service, and then sue you for damages if you do so anyway?<p>It's no different from getting a ban from Walmart for trying to sell stuff inside their store.<p>> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations.
Regardless of the ToS violation... isn't this trivial to detect?<p>Even if they keep the message volume low, detecting a swarm of accounts that are sending duplicate/similar messages seems rather trivial? The entire business model depends on Apple turning a blind eye, i'm quite amazed they got any VC money at all.
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Why would I use this instead of using iMessage for Business that is the official way and is more robust and doesn’t violate ToS. If you get shut down I have to redo this setup using Apple ?
iMessage for Business is very restrictive and has a really long approval process. On top of this, it also sends gray bubbles and doesn't allow any outbound, which prevents consented outbound use cases such as form fill text back.
> iMessage for Business is very restrictive and has a really long approval process<p>For good reason, so companies don't abuse it.
“Consented outbound use cases”<p>This is top-of-the-line corporate jargon.
> also sends gray bubbles<p>Incoming messages are _always_ gray on iOS, irrespective of the use of iMessage or SMS. Your solution is not any different in this regard.
It looks like in iMessage for business, the phone’s user’s outbound messages show as dark grey (as opposed to normal iMessage and SMS/RCS which show outbound messages as blue and green respectively). I assume this is supposed to communicate that you’re talking to a different sort of entity, not a normal person on a phone.<p>Personally I don’t see why you’d care. My business isn’t trying to pretend to be a normal person using a phone, so why would it matter?<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/</a>
I’ve never seen a gray bubble and have received incoming messages from all different types of accounts
Then there’s a misunderstanding here. I have an iPhone. When I open my Messages app and view a conversation with someone with an iPhone, my outbound messages are blue and their messages to me are gray. When I open a conversation with a non-iPhone user, my outbound messages are green and their messages to me are still gray. Are you sure you’ve never received a incoming gray message? Because that doesn’t seem possible, unless you’re talking about something other than what I and the person you responded to are talking about.<p>As far as I can tell, the OP’s insistence that their service won’t send gray messages seems entirely disconnected from reality.
Incorrect.
How does this work? Do you have an agreement with Apple to connect to their iMessage service? If you do then kudos thats a real differentiator.<p>However if you're hosting your own mac mini farm and running bluebubbles or other such things that are not approved by Apple what is your plan to handle the case where you're sending enough traffic through Apple's services that they disable / ban / block you?<p>If its the former then awesome but if its the latter then Im not sure I'd want to depend on your service knowing that apple could ban you at any time.
A few ideas for you guys:
1. Apple already supports iMessage for Business which is intended to cover the use cases you are targeting. But the set up process is ridiculous (for example: <a href="https://help.webexconnect.io/docs/wxcc-apple-messages-for-business" rel="nofollow">https://help.webexconnect.io/docs/wxcc-apple-messages-for-bu...</a>). It would be amazing to have "Vercel/Resend for iMessage for Business"
2. If you go the send blue route, please support iMessage app payloads. Send blue doesn't support that
Part of that is agreeing not to spam people and making it very clear you are legitimate business that is easy to contact.
The official api for iMessage is far richer than this and has things like forms, quick replies, various pickers, apps you can send in addition to text and images
Thanks for the suggestion! Yes, the setup process is extremely long and requires a lot of documents from the side of the business haha. It's definitely one of our goals to create the Vercel for iMessage for Business. Also, for the iMessage app payloads, that's an awesome suggestion! We can work on building that.
This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?
This is definitely going to get banned, and as a customer of Apple’s, I will be glad for it.<p>I don’t need more iMessage spam.
That is the platform risk. Apple blocked Beeper.com for the same reason.
Apple doesn't inherently prohibit programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do that. What they are against is spam and abuse. Therefore, as long as we stay compliant and prevent spam, Apple is not necessarily against this.
> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations.<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/</a><p>Apparently, they are against ANY commercial messages. Even if I personally sent marketing messages and typed them myself. So of course they are not going to like you making it easier for people to do that at scale.e<p>Technically, you are right that being programmatic is not the issue (so presumably those openclaw adapters are okay).<p>But let's not mislead investors or customers -- Apple has clearly stated your use case is not welcome (except through the iMessage Business Program they control).
How are your financial incentives aligned against sending spam? From this side, your words seem hollow and the typical viability of these businesses relies on sending spam.
They developed AppleScript for people to do this individually, at limited scale.<p>Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale.<p>This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.
People don't report our phone lines to be spam because the use cases that we focus on are either mostly inbound (e.g. customer service, the user is the one who texts first) or warm opt-in outbound (e.g. form-fill text back or follow ups). Businesses want a better medium to communicate with their users and users want something more conversational and native to their messaging behaviors.
That "opt-in" is going to be a vaguely-worded auto-filled checkbox and the "consent" will be stretched far beyond what any user thinks they're agreeing to.
I genuinely can’t tell if this is naivety or willful ignorance, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.<p>This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse.<p>They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered.<p>You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.
Are you telling me that the “report spam” button actually does something??!?!?!!!
Isn't this a direct violation of Apple's terms of service? You say you aren't spammy but at a certain point you <i>will</i> get banned. I'm not sure how YC funded this based on the platform risk alone but I guess these days they're throwing anything and everything at the wall.
I think this is bad and antisocial and you should shut it down. I like imessage <i>because</i> businesses cannot easily use it. The people who are most willing to pay for what you provide will do so because they can thereby annoy me in interfaces where other spammers cannot.<p>More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
> I like imessage because businesses cannot easily use it. The people who are most willing to pay for what you provide will do so because they can thereby annoy me in interfaces where other spammers cannot.<p>I strongly disagree. If I need to chat with a business, an airline for example, why would I want to use SMS instead of iMessage? It’s the same app, but being able to easily send screenshots or photos and know they were received would be a huge improvement.
Yes, this is what we believe! We just want to make existing conversations over SMS/RCS feel more natural and conversational!
As someone who has never owned a iPhone... what is the appeal of using iMessage? What can iMessage do that SMS/RCS can not do? Apart from the fancy iPhone-to-Mac handoff features i've seen folks use ;)
Our goal behind this is to make it easier for people to conversationally interact with agents when they want to. Use cases like customer service or form-fill text backs would fit this. People are already getting SMS/RCS conversations in their iMessage inbox. We're simply making those conversations feel more human, conversational, and natural.
iMessage has official business accounts. Although I’m not clear if that’s what this company is using.
I agree this no bueno and anyone not in my contacts gets filtered out.<p>Why build a startup outside of making money from spamming community (mobsters) when its only annoys almost every human who receives spam calls, voicemails and texts? I mean even the founders and or those closest to them.. Im sure they love all the spam calls, voicemails (most recently being the annoying personal loan b.s.) and texts... right?<p>Im sure there's money to be made with spam outfits (mobsters) and more shaddy folks but again this isn't helping the issue that bugs almost every cellphone user out there. The government now is working on trying to fix this issue further, I bet there's more money there to be made in help fixing the issue then exborate it!
I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
Being accepted into YC is not something that makes you or your idea invulnerable.<p><a href="https://ycgraveyard.iamwillwang.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ycgraveyard.iamwillwang.com/</a><p><a href="https://startups.rip/" rel="nofollow">https://startups.rip/</a>
Treme, on externalities:<p>> I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
YC seems a bit different from I remember it back in 2007 when I first joined. They're pushing things like "GStack" now.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/wkv2ifxPpF8?si=OHXgW92T_aZUbwpA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/wkv2ifxPpF8?si=OHXgW92T_aZUbwpA</a>
> the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS/RCS<p>Would you mind detailing your reasoning <i>why</i> agents should feel humans, when they very obviously aren’t? Why should we want AI to impersonate humans?
we don't think AI should by any means to pretend to be human, and we are not trying to hide that an agent is involved.<p>What we mean is that conversation should feel natural and low-friction for the person receiving it. These interactions: blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions will make it less like an automated SMS message and more like a normal messaging flow.<p>We are trying to make agentic communication clear, useful, and native to channels people already use!
The ideas like this one are the rarest of the startup ideas you wish they don't become too successful as they are the target for exploitation by bad actors with ad dollars quickly.<p>They won't be able to say no to the money.
If this were legit then twilio would offer it already. People in messaging/b2c apps have been asking for it for a decade and the best weve managed is whatsapp. Kind of weirded out that this made it into YC.
How is this any different then<p><a href="https://blooio.com/" rel="nofollow">https://blooio.com/</a>
<a href="https://www.sendblue.com/">https://www.sendblue.com/</a>
<a href="https://www.lindy.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lindy.ai/</a>
etc?<p>I will say I am the exact opposite of your market, I want absolutely nothing like this. In fact I'd prefer iMessage to allow ZERO programmatic interfacing.
I'm surprised YC funded this — not because it's a bad idea, because it isn't. But because surely one of the first questions was: what happens when Apple decides to shut it down?
Someone tag Apple in this thread and shut them down please
So the business is to trick people into thinking they’re speaking with a real person and therefore save money on real support
What is your plan to prevent spam from bad actors?<p>How do you ban bad actors so they can't spam again?<p>Does a user have to initiate contact in order to have messages sent to them?
1. Since we're not fully self-serve right now, we can choose to only partner with businesses with use cases that are opt-in and non-spam.
2. If we find that one of our customers is using this for spam, we'll reach out to them asap and determine next steps
3. Not necessarily. We support both inbound (user texts the phone line first) and opt-in outbound (we text the user first) use cases
How do I as an iOS user permanently opt-out of your services before I get spammed to death with them?
And what would be the next steps? Would you block them from using your services, even if they are paying customers? Do you have agreements in place with your users to cover those situations? Is there a way for end users to report to you what they see as spam or unsolicited content? How do you monitor customers activity to determine if they are bad actors?<p>You should have answers for those points if you want to build trust with end users
For prospective customers, we would most likely try to work with them to brainstorm use cases that are consent-based and non-spam. For current customers, if we do see that they're using our services for spam, we'll reach out to them asap.<p>Also, while we can't see the exact messages that our customers are sending due to encryption on our servers, we do know when a phone line is close to being banned from our health checks. When that happens, we'll reach out to our customers asap and learn more about what is going on.
Hope this gets killed quickly with prejudice.
This is a very simple integration and the fallback is also pretty straightforward to implement technically. What’s the differentiator? Why would companies use your product?
I'd say mainly scale and stability. While people can definitely do this on their own through Bluebubbles or custom Applescript, stability is difficult to maintain, especially at scale. For most businesses, iMessage is not the core product they want to think about and maintain. They just want a reliable API and support/team to talk to so that they can reliably integrate it as a part of their existing business structure.
Is this allowed under Apple's ToS?<p>I recall the Beeper Mini debacle not so long ago, and fear that this may be a house built on sand.
Apple is not necessarily against programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do so. Beeper was using it to replace the iMessage interface when it already exists, which is why I think Apple was against it. We're doing something fundamentally different - allowing agents to interact with humans on iMessage, which is something that the current iMessage interface cannot do.
Apple were against Beeper because it opened their platform to people who weren’t Apple-sanctioned users.<p>Apple might have cited a different technical reason but that would only have been to avoid antitrust regulations.<p>Unfortunately for you, this startup idea also allows non-sanctioned entities access to iMessage. So Apple will ban your access to.
As much as I want to applaud your progress here, as a user I want transactional stuff to stay in my email inbox. My iMessage is already starting to become overwhelming from spam and apps — I want fewer messages not more.
Same. I hope Apple continues to come down on these companies -- and their customers -- that abuse the trust that Apple has built up with iMessage.<p>Sorry OP. Not all products need to succeed.
Yeah I agree. Our goal behind this is not to clutter up people's iMessage inbox with more transactional messages. It's to replace the SMS/RCS conversations that people are already having with customer service and scheduling agents with something more conversational and human.
Why is iMessage "more conversational" than RCS? and "more human"??<p>I don't get the distinction you're making. I'm not an expert in mobile messaging so maybe I am missing something obvious.<p>And what about WhatsApp?
iMessage is more conversational because it's what most people are used to using and seeing. People generally associate green bubble messages with spam/transactional messaging and blue bubble with trust. Additionally, iMessage also has additional features such as typing indicators and reactions (likes and loves) that makes the interface feel more conversational. WhatsApp could also be very conversational, but most people in the US use iMessage.
My existence couldn’t possibly be any more digital, and I can’t remember a single time I’ve had a SMS/RCS conversation with customer service or a scheduling agent. I don’t want to have one either. My message inbox is already full enough.<p>My iMessages are for conversations with people that I actually want to talk to. The notifications are high priority because it’s with people that I want to talk to.<p>I can’t imagine my annoyance if I were to receive an iMessage notification while I’m expecting an important message, only to find that it’s more spam.<p>My email inbox is already a wasteland because of this. The absolute last thing I need or want is for the same thing to happen to iMessage.
That's why we're making sure that all of the use cases are non-spam and also of high importance to the user. As we've seen through our customers, an after-hour customer support agent for their apartment, as an example, could be a contact of high importance for the user and definitely not spam in their iMessage
Why use this over Twilio which works pretty hard to make sure you’re compliant (and supports iMessage for business)?
ты черт
how is it possible to build this whole thing and not know there is a very rich first party api that does the same thing and more in iMessage
<a href="https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/</a>
iMessage for business has a very long and restrictive registration process, gray bubbles instead of blue bubbles, and is inbound only. We're democratizing iMessage for businesses that have good intentions on helping their customers more but can't afford to go through the long approval process.
Does the name come from the farsi word "chert"?
"Chert" is a poor branding for all Russian [and Ukrainian customers - it means "crap" or "damn".
Love chatting with an agent via iMessage for the right use case - it feels very natural and human. I hacked my own together with an old laptop and BlueBubbles.<p>How would you compare your offering with Spectrum (<a href="https://photon.codes/" rel="nofollow">https://photon.codes/</a>)?
> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations.<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/</a><p>Seems pretty damn clear.
Assuming we have more customers using WhatsApp over iMessage, How did you decide to use iMessage over WhatsApp messaging?
Why shouldn't Apple shut this down to prevent spam in order to defend the Apple customer experience.
How does this differ from LoopMessage?<p>What is the cost?
This is a foothold business living entirely at Apple's discretion.<p>edit: more research<p>> Chert is in the Sendblue/Blooio lineage, which runs genuine Apple software on real Macs logged into real Apple IDs. They're almost certainly not doing "Beeper Plus again."
Spam is an evergreen vertical
Pricing anywhere?
It's good YC is funding you because it acts as a later of protection from legal threats by apple. Hopefully if/when Apple litigate this I hope you will fight and set precedent for commercialisation of adversarial interoperability (A digital human right).<p>I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.
AI slop
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I like the idea of explaining things like "<brand name> for <brand name>"