Ask HN: How useful is text messaging?

Most business communications should be done in email. You want an easily searchable trail, and email lends itself very nicely to communication that doesn't have to immediately be resolved.

For everything else casual, people use whatever apps are popular in their region - whatsapp, imessage, slack, discord, etc. All do relatively the same thing, but should not ever be relied on as the primary method of official communication. All of them suck for record keeping.

Text messaging kinda sucks, as the messages are by default bound to a single device, and often lost when moving devices.

It does have a single advantage: most phone numbers support it, and you can send messages to people without prior coordination of which app to use.

But once you are more familiar with recipient, pretty much any app will work better.

Apps can be used over Wi-Fi, so you don't pay enormous prices when you text from abroad.