Dang, I support your efforts but I just don't have any incentive to pay for a texting app. Normal texting and WhatsApp and discord and Instagram and tiktok messages etc etc are all free. So I just don't really have a reason to subscribe to this.
This product is not for you. I don't know where you're commenting from, but I'm guessing it's not from the US. Using WhatsApp or Discord or Instagram or TikTok messages only have value because the people you want to talk to use them. In the US, iMessage is by far the dominant messaging service for iPhone users, and iPhones dominate certain socioeconomic groups. This situation sucks, but there are lots of Android users who get extremely frustrated when a large group of their friends are on iPhones, to the point it can be socially isolating when you're "the odd man out" in a group chat (and it's not the whole green/blue bubbles the media likes to talk about, it's that interoperability between iMessage and other clients sucks and breaks many features).
This is a great option for US Android users who want to be able to better communicate with their friends that have iPhones.
(iMessage has, for me, actually been worth it - but still, I frequently find myself wishing that something like Beeper Mini existed so I could go back to android).
It's not 2008 anymore, we're all in walled gardens now.
Whilst there are edge cases, the majority of Android users are effectively within a walled garden, which the opposite used to be one of its strongest appeals.
I can't convince dozens of people in the groups to go sign up for signal just to accommodate me
Some people are just a little less quick to message you back if you're a green bubble or ask to use WhatsApp, especially in certain circles.
// insert some clever "you are the product" here.