Have you giving any thought of using a different platform? I like the idea of writing a chat bot myself that would work iOS built in Messages but I can't seem to think of a way around it short of using SMS and Twillo which would start to get expensive. Anybody have any suggestions?
I actually started out on SMS with Twilio! I switched to Facebook Messenger simply because it was starting to get expensive and I really started to miss the niceties of using a proper chat platform: thing like predictable message delivery, getting someone's first name without asking, and easy/free image embedding.
I'm going to try and do Google Hangouts and Slack next - unless someone has other good ideas for platforms to support?