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Messaging Agents

Which iMessage API should you use?

Five questions about what your agent actually needs, then a shortlist with the reasoning shown so you can disagree with it. Every rule here comes from a published pricing page, and each one says which. Nothing is for sale on this page and no answer is behind an email.

Does your agent need to send the first message?

Some plans are inbound-first: the agent can reply, but cannot start a conversation.

Do you need a number that never changes?

Several cheap tiers use a shared pool where the sender number varies between messages.

Roughly how many messages a month?

Metered pricing wins at low volume and loses at scale. This is where the answer flips.

Will you run a Mac yourself?

Self-hosting is free in licence terms and puts uptime and the Apple account on you.

Do you need SOC 2 or HIPAA?

Only two providers publish either claim. Verify currency and scope yourself before relying on it.

All nine, before you answer anything

Answer above and this list narrows, with a note on every provider that drops out explaining which of your answers ruled it out.

How this decides

There is no scoring and no ranking. Each answer applies a rule taken from a provider’s own published pricing page, and a provider is either ruled out by a rule or it is not. Where a rule would be unfair to apply as an exclusion, because the answer is purchasable rather than absent, it appears as a warning instead. Ordering is by route, exactly as on the full comparison, and never by price or by any relationship with us.

Two providers publish no pricing at all, so no set of answers can rule them in or out on cost. That is recorded as a warning rather than treated as an answer.