RCS (Rich Communication Services) is the modern upgrade to SMS. It delivers rich media, interactive buttons, suggested replies, read receipts and branded sender information inside a user’s native messaging app. RCS works natively on all phones, so users do not need a separate app to receive rich messages.
RCS gives businesses richer tools than SMS—such as high-resolution images, carousels, quick-reply buttons, and verification badges—so brands can send interactive, conversion-focused messages (order cards, booking confirmations, appointment reminders, promotional carousels) that users can act on immediately. These features drive higher engagement and better click-through rates than plain SMS.
Telecoms and vendors now position RCS as a native, trusted channel that complements WhatsApp rather than replaces it. RCS shows up in the default Messages app, gives brands a verified presence, and works well for all audiences and scenarios where rich, branded messaging matters.
RCS messaging gives businesses the power of rich, interactive chat without asking customers to download any new app. Since RCS works inside the default Messages app, users trust it more and engage with it naturally. As a result, brands see higher open rates, better click-through rates, and stronger conversions compared to SMS.
One of the biggest benefits of RCS is brand verification. Each RCS message shows your brand name, logo, and verified badge. This reduces fraud risk and increases customer trust. Therefore, customers feel safer clicking buttons, viewing product cards, or completing actions inside the message itself.
Another major advantage is interactivity. Unlike SMS, RCS supports:
Because of this, RCS turns a simple message into a mini customer journey. Users can browse, select, and act without leaving the chat. This directly improves engagement and shortens the sales cycle.
From a cost and performance angle, RCS often delivers a better ROI than both SMS and WhatsApp API for certain use cases, especially notifications, reminders, and promotional campaigns. Several industry benchmarks show that RCS campaigns consistently achieve higher interaction rates than SMS because of its visual and interactive nature.
Businesses across industries now use RCS for both marketing and operations. The most common high-impact use cases include:
E-commerce brands send interactive order cards with:
This improves transparency and reduces support tickets because customers get everything inside one message.
Brands run RCS campaigns with:
These campaigns perform better than SMS because users can visually explore the offer before clicking.
Hospitals, salons, and service businesses use RCS to:
This improves operational efficiency and customer experience at the same time.
Banks and fintech companies use RCS for:
The verified sender identity improves trust for sensitive notifications.
In short, RCS helps businesses move from plain-text alerts to fully interactive customer conversations. It combines the reach of SMS with the experience of modern chat apps, which is why adoption continues to grow rapidly across retail, healthcare, logistics, and finance.
Businesses often ask a simple question: “Which channel should I use for customer messaging—SMS, WhatsApp, or RCS?” The real answer depends on cost, ease of setup, message volume, target audiences and customer experience. While each channel has its place, RCS clearly stands out when you need interactive messaging at scale without high costs.
Let’s compare all three from a real business point of view.
SMS is available on every mobile phone and works without the internet. Because of this, it remains the safest choice for basic alerts. However, it offers the least engagement.
What SMS does well:
Where SMS falls short:
Cost & Setup Factors:
Therefore, SMS works for reach, but not for engagement.
WhatsApp feels personal and familiar. That is why it delivers high open and reply rates. However, the official API adds cost, approvals, and strict rules.
What WhatsApp does well:
Where WhatsApp creates friction:
Cost & Setup Factors:
So, WhatsApp works well for support-heavy communication, but it becomes costly for bulk campaigns.
RCS combines the reach of SMS with the experience of WhatsApp. It runs directly inside the Messages app and supports rich content without forcing users to install any extra app.
What makes RCS powerful:
Where RCS wins for businesses:
Cost & Setup Factors:
RCS gives you high engagement without high WhatsApp-style pricing.
Choose the right messaging channel for your business
What This Means for Your Business
That is why most growing businesses now follow a multi-channel strategy:
This mix gives you the best reach, best engagement, and best control over cost.
Getting started with RCS messaging looks technical from the outside, but you can break it into a few clear steps. If you follow these in order, you move from “just reading about RCS” to “sending your first rich campaign” without feeling lost.
The first and most important step in using RCS messaging is choosing the right RCS service provider. You cannot send RCS messages directly from a normal mobile number. You need a platform that connects your business with telecom operators and manages brand verification, message delivery, analytics, and billing.
When selecting an RCS provider, always look for:
This is where LeminAI becomes a very strong choice for small and medium businesses.
After choosing your RCS service provider, the next step is to register your business brand and sender profile. This step is mandatory because RCS only works with verified business identities. Once approved, your customers will see your brand name and logo on every message instead of a random number.
You need to submit your basic business details such as your business name, website, category, support email, and contact number. After that, you upload your brand logo and choose the display name you want customers to see.
For verification, you may need to provide documents like a GST certificate, company registration proof, or PAN details. Once submitted, telecom operators like Jio and Vi review your profile. This approval usually takes 1 to 3 working days.
After approval, your sender becomes officially RCS verified, which increases trust and improves message engagement.
Now you create the actual RCS message that your customers will see. This is the most important step because RCS allows you to use rich visuals and interactive elements.
First, choose the type of layout you want to use. You can send a single image card, a carousel with multiple product cards, or a simple text with media combination. Then upload your product images, offer banners, or brand creatives. Clear and attractive visuals always perform better.
Next, write a short and clear message. Use a strong headline, followed by one or two lines explaining the offer or update. Your message should focus on one clear goal—either to inform, remind, or sell.
After the text, add action buttons such as Buy Now, View Product, Track Order, Call Support, or Get Offer. These buttons make your message interactive and help customers take action instantly.
Before saving the message, always preview it on a test device. Check whether the images load correctly, the text is readable, and the buttons redirect properly. Once everything looks good, save your RCS message.
Once your brand is verified and your RCS message is ready, you can launch your first campaign.
Start by selecting your target audience. You can send messages to all customers, only recent buyers, new leads, location-based users, or any custom segment you have created. Good targeting improves results and keeps your cost under control.
Next, choose when you want to send the campaign. You can send it immediately, schedule it for a specific date and time, or trigger it based on a customer action such as order placement or cart abandonment.
Before sending to everyone, always send a test message to your own number or your team. This final check helps you catch any mistakes in images, links, or buttons.
After testing, go live with your campaign. Messages will start delivering to users through the RCS network in real time. Once delivery begins, monitor key performance data like message views, button clicks, and conversions such as orders or inquiries. These insights will help you improve your future RCS campaigns.
Launch your rich communication service in 4 simple steps
Pick a platform like LeminAI that connects you to Jio & Vi and gives you a simple dashboard to manage everything.
Add your business name, logo and documents so your RCS profile gets verified and trusted by customers.
Create beautiful cards with images, text and interactive buttons like "Buy now" or "Track order".
Send to your target list, then monitor views, clicks and conversions inside your analytics dashboard.
RCS works best when you use it for messages that need both attention and action. Instead of plain text like SMS or expensive templates on WhatsApp, RCS lets you send rich, clickable content that feels like a mini landing page inside the customer’s inbox.
Here are some of the most powerful use cases for small businesses:
RCS is perfect for promotions where you want customers to see the offer, not just read it.
You can send:
This works very well for:
Because the message looks visual and clickable, response rates are much higher than SMS.
Instead of sending a plain text like “Your order has been shipped,” RCS lets you send:
Customers get all the details in one rich card. This reduces “Where is my order?” messages and improves trust in your brand.
If you run an online store, abandoned carts hurt revenue. With RCS, you can send:
This kind of visual reminder nudges users back to the checkout page and increases conversions.
For clinics, salons, gyms, and coaching centers, RCS works very well for appointment flows.
You can send:
Customers don’t have to type anything. They just tap a button, and your system updates their status. This reduces no-shows and missed bookings.
After a service or purchase, you can send an RCS message asking for quick feedback.
For example:
Because the experience feels smooth and visual, more people respond compared to boring survey links.
You can use RCS carousels to show multiple products in one message:
This feels like a mini catalog inside the chat and works beautifully for:
For inactive customers, RCS helps you bring them back with:
This kind of rich, interactive message usually performs better than plain SMS or email reactivation campaigns.
You can run all these use cases from one place when you use a platform like LeminAI, which lets you design rich RCS cards, add buttons, choose your audience, and send campaigns without any complex setup.
When businesses compare messaging channels, cost quickly becomes the deciding factor. While WhatsApp delivers great engagement, its per-conversation pricing model makes large-scale campaigns expensive. On the other hand, RCS messaging offers high engagement at a much lower cost, which makes it ideal for promotions, reminders, and bulk customer communication.
With WhatsApp API, you pay based on conversation categories such as marketing, utility, authentication, and service. Each outbound message opens a paid conversation window. As your message volume grows, your monthly bill rises quickly. In addition, you often pay extra markup to a BSP (Business Solution Provider).
So even if one message feels cheap, running daily campaigns for:
can push costs very high for small and medium businesses.
RCS pricing works more like bulk messaging with rich features, not per-conversation windows. You pay per message, not per chat session. There are no strict marketing window limits like WhatsApp. This makes it predictable and easier to budget.
More importantly, RCS gives you:
at a cost that stays much closer to SMS than to WhatsApp.
Send 10 RCS messages at the cost of just 4 WhatsApp messages
Lower cost alone is not enough. What matters is return on investment (ROI). RCS improves ROI in three key ways:
For example:
Yes, RCS messaging is both safe and verified when sent through an official RCS service provider. In fact, security and brand trust are two of the biggest reasons why many businesses now prefer RCS over SMS for customer communication.
Before any business can send RCS messages, it must go through a brand verification process. This means:
Only after this approval does your brand become live on RCS. Once verified, customers see your official business name and logo instead of a random mobile number. This instantly builds trust and reduces the risk of fraud or fake messages.
Unlike SMS, where anyone can send bulk messages easily, RCS operates on a permission-based model. This helps in:
Because messages come only from verified brands, users feel safer opening and interacting with them.
RCS also respects user choice. Customers can:
This ensures that customers stay in control of what they receive, which helps businesses maintain a clean and compliant messaging list.
RCS is a secure, telecom-approved, and verified messaging channel built specifically for trusted business communication. It combines strong brand verification, network-level security, and customer control, making it far safer and more reliable than traditional SMS for rich business messaging.
Customer communication has moved far beyond plain SMS. Today, businesses need messaging that is rich, interactive, trusted, and cost-effective—and that is exactly what RCS delivers. It combines the wide reach of telecom messaging with the engaging experience of modern chat apps. From promotions and reminders to order updates and re-engagement campaigns, RCS gives you better visibility, higher interaction, and stronger ROI than traditional channels.
More importantly, when you compare RCS with WhatsApp API, the cost advantage becomes very clear. With RCS, you can send nearly 10 rich messages at the cost of just 4 WhatsApp API messages. That means more reach, more clicks, and more conversions without increasing your budget. For small and medium businesses, this difference can directly impact monthly profits and long-term growth.
If you are serious about improving customer engagement while keeping your messaging costs under control, now is the right time to adopt RCS.
If you want higher engagement than SMS, lower cost than WhatsApp API, and better trust with verified branding, RCS is the channel you should invest in—and LeminAI gives you one of the easiest and most affordable ways to do it in India.
👉 Recharge, sign up, and start your first RCS campaign with LeminAi today.
RCS (Rich Communication Services) is the modern upgrade to SMS. It allows businesses to send rich messages with images, buttons, carousels and verified branding inside the phone's default Messages app.
Yes. RCS is far better than SMS because it supports rich visuals, clickable buttons and verified branding, which leads to higher engagement and conversions.
Yes. In most cases, businesses can send nearly 10 RCS messages at the cost of about 4 WhatsApp API messages, which greatly improves ROI for bulk campaigns.
No. RCS works inside the default Messages app, so customers do not need to install any extra application.
Yes. RCS uses verified business profiles with approved brand names and logos. This reduces spam, fraud, and brand impersonation.
Jio and Vi currently support RCS business messaging in India, and coverage is expanding as more networks enable it.
Businesses can buy RCS credits, sign up on the RCS portal, complete brand verification and then start sending campaigns.
RCS does not fully replace WhatsApp. WhatsApp works best for support chats, while RCS is ideal for bulk promotions and rich notifications.
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