SMS are free in the US on all but the lowest of the low end plans. If you are paying for them you likely don&#x27;t have a data plan to use with iMessage anyways, or a prohbitively expensive one.<p>Ideally something like Signal would take off. Its free, cross-platform, encrypted, and supports more or less everything that SMS&#x2F;MMS does without actually using those protocols.<p>That being said, aside from encryption, I think SMS really doesn&#x27;t suck. What messaging system exists on virtually every phone manufactured in the past 15 years, is a built in feature, isn&#x27;t tied to a country, carrier, or platform, doesn&#x27;t require data service, and costs nothing or next to it?