> 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.
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?
It's no different from getting a ban from Walmart for trying to sell stuff inside their store.
> 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.
zitterbewegung
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 ?
arrsingh
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.
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.
show comments
liamcardenas
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: https://help.webexconnect.io/docs/wxcc-apple-messages-for-bu...). 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
show comments
landl0rd
I think this is bad and antisocial and you should shut it down. 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.
More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
show comments
Calvin02
This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?
show comments
kneel25
So the business is to trick people into thinking they’re speaking with a real person and therefore save money on real support
chopete3
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.
They won't be able to say no to the money.
show comments
hotstickyballs
Someone tag Apple in this thread and shut them down please
satvikpendem
Isn't this a direct violation of Apple's terms of service? You say you aren't spammy but at a certain point you will 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 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.
show comments
dgellow
> the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS/RCS
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?
show comments
xena
What is your plan to prevent spam from bad actors?
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?
show comments
tequila_shot
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?
show comments
zerozerotwo
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
https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/
show comments
littke
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.
show comments
the_arun
Assuming we have more customers using WhatsApp over iMessage, How did you decide to use iMessage over WhatsApp messaging?
show comments
MuffinFlavored
This is a foothold business living entirely at Apple's discretion.
edit: more research
> 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."
show comments
frumplestlatz
> 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.
Why shouldn't Apple shut this down to prevent spam in order to defend the Apple customer experience.
show comments
huhrymuhry20000
I like the idea of explaining things like "<brand name> for <brand name>"
show comments
plombe
AI slop
smashah
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).
I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.
> 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.
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?
It's no different from getting a ban from Walmart for trying to sell stuff inside their store.
> 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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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: https://help.webexconnect.io/docs/wxcc-apple-messages-for-bu...). 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
I think this is bad and antisocial and you should shut it down. 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.
More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?
So the business is to trick people into thinking they’re speaking with a real person and therefore save money on real support
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.
They won't be able to say no to the money.
Someone tag Apple in this thread and shut them down please
Isn't this a direct violation of Apple's terms of service? You say you aren't spammy but at a certain point you will 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.
How is this any different then
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.
> the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS/RCS
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?
What is your plan to prevent spam from bad actors?
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?
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?
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 https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/
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.
Assuming we have more customers using WhatsApp over iMessage, How did you decide to use iMessage over WhatsApp messaging?
This is a foothold business living entirely at Apple's discretion.
edit: more research
> 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."
> 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.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/
Seems pretty damn clear.
Why shouldn't Apple shut this down to prevent spam in order to defend the Apple customer experience.
I like the idea of explaining things like "<brand name> for <brand name>"
AI slop
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).
I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.