We originally started by building products on top of iMessage because the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS/RCS. These included a one-shot iMessage agent builder that reached 2,000 users in one week and an automated iMessage outbound sequencer that sent thousands of outbound messages per day.
The hard part is that iMessage does not have a native API like SMS/RCS. Sending and receiving iMessages requires a separate infrastructure that is difficult to set up and maintain, especially at scale.
As we talked to more companies, we realized that the highest-volume use cases for iMessage were not B2C agents or even sales. They were things like customer service, missed-call text-back, cart abandonment, and inbound lead capture in verticals like home services, DTC brands, and property management that drive the highest volume.
Furthermore, these companies often need additional support, such as custom infrastructure setup (e.g. contact card, area code, or local worker sessions), integration support with their existing SMS/RCS or voice agent systems, and a reliable way to scale their volume over time.
We built Chert to be an infrastructure layer for businesses to handle iMessage conversations at scale. Businesses can use our API to send and receive iMessages programmatically, route replies to humans or agents, and integrate conversations into the systems they already use.
To maintain stability across both outbound and inbound use cases, we built phone line health checks and SMS/RCS fallback systems. We also integrate with existing SMS/RCS systems, voice agents, CRMs such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Attio, and tools like Slack. Finally, we let businesses reliably scale from a few test lines to hundreds of lines with automated line provisioning and a usage-based pricing structure.
We’re working with companies doing conversational messaging in DTC, sports programs, property management, and home services at the scale of hundreds of lines.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this and other similar verticals where iMessage could be useful. All comments welcome!
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?
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.
Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t need more iMessage spam.
what you encourage and what actually happens are two different things, though. gmail does not actively encourage spam, yet most spam emails i receive are from gmail addresses.
you have to actively fight against malicious uses, like spam. "not encouraging" is nowhere near enough.
what systems/processes/safeguards do you have in place to prevent abuse?
"right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale.
do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?
Would you mind detailing your reasoning why agents should feel humans, when they very obviously aren’t? Why should we want AI to impersonate humans?
How do you ban bad actors so they can't spam again?
Does a user have to initiate contact in order to have messages sent to them?
You should have answers for those points if you want to build trust with end users
I don't get the distinction you're making. I'm not an expert in mobile messaging so maybe I am missing something obvious.
And what about WhatsApp?
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.
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.
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.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/
Seems pretty damn clear.
I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.
https://blooio.com/ https://www.sendblue.com/ https://www.lindy.ai/ etc?
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.
RCS fallbacks, Emoji reactions, typing indicators, even changing chat background