Comment by Markoff

> Is there a consolidated messaging app that the HN community recommends?

I am not HN community, but there is Beeper or Texts.com possibly others, there are also (other) Matrix bridges, but it's PITA to set them on your own.

Personally I'd just move family and (old) relatives to Whatsapp and you will have everything consolidated in one app used by everyone anyway. That one relative would have easy choice, either Whatsapp or SMS if they wanna talk to me, not keeping extra app for one special snowflake.

Plus you need to keep SMS app to receive all those codes, shipping updates since Whatsapp sadly doesn't support SMS.

That's also my setup - Whatsapp+SMS, used to have also Signal years ago with family before we ditched it en masse after PINgate for Whatsapp, my mother has also Facebook, I think father only Whatsapp, sister I don't talk to has also Whatsapp, wife has Whatsapp and (Google) Messages which she use just for receiving SMS.

If I would be moving somewhere my family (parents, wife, kids) I'd go for Element (Matrix) - decentralized network, various apps to choose from, no phone required.

Another alternative but without (video) calls would be using some email app like Delta Chat or Mailtime for instant messaging, that would require no signing up for new service, I like the idea, though I guess messages would be quite slow.

Btw. Messenger and Skype (Lite) supports SMS, so since you use Messenger anyway you could ditch SMS app and Signal after they remove SMS, if you wanna keep more IM apps than having everyone on Whatsapp.