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RCS Business Message types

An RCS message is charged for according to what it contains — not according to which type you picked in the campaign. There are three rates and the portal decides between them on its own.

The rates you are charged by

Rate	When it applies
Basic	Plain text up to 160 characters, with no buttons
Single	Longer text, buttons, an image, a card or a carousel
Session	The recipient replies and opens a conversation

Important

A single button is enough to lose the basic rate. The portal only applies it when the message has at most 160 characters and no buttons at all. The moment one of those fails, it is charged as a single message.

Prices per rate and country are in the price list.

Message types in a campaign

When building an RCS campaign you pick from five types. The rate follows from them automatically:

Type	What it holds	Rate
Text (Basic)	A short plain message, 160 characters max	always basic
Text (Single)	Text up to 5,000 characters, formatting, buttons	basic, or single
Rich Card	A title, description, image or video, and buttons	always single
Carousel	Several cards side by side to swipe through	always single
File	A standalone image, video or document	always single

Content limits

Field	Limit
Text (Basic)	160 characters
Text (Single)	5,000 characters
Card title	200 characters
Card description	2,000 characters
Button label	25 characters
Carousel	at least one card

The text supports accented characters, emoji and basic formatting (bold, italics, underline).

Message lifetime

Every message carries a lifetime — if the handset does not pick it up in time, it is dropped. The default is 60 seconds and it can be set anywhere from 10 seconds to 15 days.

Tip

A short lifetime suits one-time codes and time-bound offers. For an ordinary message set it longer, so the message waits until the recipient is back on the network.

Conversations (sessions)

When the recipient replies within 24 hours, a conversation opens: one session is charged and further messages sent inside its window are not counted separately. The conversation lasts 24 hours from the first reply, after which it can be started again the same way.

Note

A conversation only arises for an agent registered in the Conversational billing category. With the Basic and Single message categories the recipient can still reply, but no conversation opens and every message you send is charged on its own.

Important

A message sent over RCS is charged as a 24-hour session first. If the recipient does not reply within 24 hours, it is re-charged as a single message and the difference is returned to your account. The recipient pays nothing for replying — only for data, so on Wi-Fi the reply costs them nothing.

Agent billing category

You choose the category when registering the RCS sender and it should match how the agent behaves:

Category	Who it is for
Basic message	The agent mostly sends short text messages and expects no replies — typically an upgrade from SMS to RCS
Single message	The agent sends rich content and expects no replies
Conversational	The agent holds a two-way dialogue; a reply opens a 24-hour conversation

The agent's category does not restrict what you may send — an agent in the Basic message category can send a card too and will be charged the single rate for it. It only decides whether a conversation can arise at all.

The conditions for registering agents are described in the Google documentation for RCS Business Messaging.

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