Blooio: iMessage API and Apple Messages for Business
Blooio is a business messaging company that sells iMessage phone lines through an API and inside CRMs like GoHighLevel and HubSpot. Messages go out as blue bubbles where the recipient has an iPhone and fall back to RCS or SMS where they don’t. Blooio also does something rivals like Linq and Photon don’t: it’s on Apple’s own list of approved Messages for Business providers, which is a separate, Apple-sanctioned way for brands to chat with customers.
The quick answer: Blooio is the most accessible route to a business iMessage line for small businesses and agencies. It’s self-serve, works inside GoHighLevel and HubSpot, and has a reply-only line built for AI agents. It’s young (founded in late 2024) and strict about cold outreach. Read its cancellation and data terms before you commit. A heads-up: we make Carly, whose AI phone and texting agents overlap with part of Blooio’s business, so we’ve stuck to facts you can verify and linked the sources.
Blooio at a glance
Checked against Blooio’s site, pricing, terms and privacy policy on November 12, 2026.
| Blooio | |
|---|---|
| What it is | iMessage, RCS and SMS lines through an API and CRM integrations, plus an Apple Messages for Business channel |
| Founded | November 2024, San Diego County |
| Founders | Aria Afshar (CEO), David Harvey (CTO), Eric Parsons (chief AI officer) |
| Plans | Free trial (20 messages), Starter $39, Commercial Shared $89, Inbound $98, Commercial Dedicated $289 per line, Enterprise from $195 per line at 6+ lines |
| Message fees | None on iMessage plans |
| Apple status | Listed as an approved Messages for Business provider |
| Developer access | REST API, OpenAPI spec, webhooks, an MCP server |
| Best for | Small businesses and agencies texting existing customers, and AI agents that reply to inbound texts |
Who uses Blooio
Blooio sells to almost everyone who wants blue bubbles: roofers, real estate agents, insurance producers and GoHighLevel agencies, as well as developers building bots. That’s a wider market than Linq, which has narrowed its focus to AI agent builders, or Photon, which sells mainly to developers.
Blooio says it has served more than 8,000 businesses and sent more than 10 million messages, with about a 99% delivery rate across 4.2 million outbound iMessages from January to March 2026. Those are its own figures.
Two products under one name
Blooio sells two quite different things, and it’s easy to mix them up.
Number-based iMessage lines. This is the main product. You get a phone number, shared or dedicated, that can send and receive iMessage, with automatic fallback to RCS and SMS. You drive it from the API, an MCP server for AI agents, or integrations including GoHighLevel, HubSpot, Zapier, Make, n8n, Clay and Vercel’s Chat SDK. This is the product that competes with Linq and Photon.
Apple Messages for Business. Apple’s official business channel lets customers message a verified brand from a website, app, QR code or Apple Maps, and supports Apple Pay, list pickers and appointment scheduling inside the chat. Businesses can only reach it through an approved messaging service provider. When we loaded Apple’s provider list, Blooio was on it, alongside Salesforce, Zendesk, LivePerson, AWS and nearly 40 others. Linq and Photon weren’t.
The distinction matters. Being an Apple-approved provider covers the Messages for Business channel, where customers start the conversation. It doesn’t mean Apple has approved Blooio’s number-based iMessage lines. Blooio’s own terms say third-party platforms such as Apple “may prohibit automated access, reverse engineering, or indirect integration,” and that complying with those restrictions is the customer’s responsibility.
Blooio also sells RCS Business Messaging senders and ordinary US phone numbers for texting and calling, and offers an AI agent that can answer calls.
Blooio pricing
All iMessage plans include the API, unlimited team members, webhooks, CRM integrations and the MCP server, with no per-message fees. Prices are from Blooio’s pricing page.
| Plan | Price | Number | New conversations a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 | Shared | 20 messages in total |
| Starter | $39/month | Shared | 5 |
| Commercial Shared | $89/month | Shared | 15 |
| Inbound | $98/month | Dedicated, reply-only | None (reply only) |
| Commercial Dedicated | $289/month per line | Dedicated | No plan cap |
| Enterprise Dedicated | $389 for one line, falling to $195 per line at 6+ lines | Dedicated fleet | No plan cap |
Shared numbers come from a managed pool, so your sending number can change between messages. They suit testing and light use.
Inbound is Blooio’s AI agent plan. You get your own number, every inbound message fires a signed webhook to your agent, and you can reply to anyone who texts you first. You can’t start conversations.
Commercial Dedicated adds voice calling, call forwarding, FaceTime on request, scheduled messages and a year of message history. Enterprise adds a dedicated account manager, unlimited history, auto-scaling and what Blooio calls “auto-unbanning.”
Extras: a custom area code costs $75 per number, one time, and porting a number may cost extra. Blooio says it charges no activation or setup fees.
The RCS, SMS and voice products are billed separately, mostly by usage, and texting on Blooio’s plain US numbers needs 10DLC carrier registration. Our business texting guide explains how 10DLC works.
The sending limits behind “unlimited”
Dedicated plans advertise unlimited messages and no cap on new conversations. In practice, safety controls still decide how fast a line can send.
- Shared plans allow 5 (Starter) or 15 (Commercial Shared) new recipients in a rolling 24 hours, and Blooio’s terms ban broadcasting or bulk messaging on them outright.
- Inbound lines can only reply to people who messaged that number first.
- Dedicated lines are paced automatically. Blooio says that starting more than 10 new conversations a day on a trailing three-day average, combined with a written reply rate under 40%, can trigger number-level pacing. A line’s current stage and recovery targets appear on a Limits page in the dashboard.
- Cold outreach is banned on every plan. The terms say contacting people without prior consent, an existing relationship or a prior inbound message, “commonly referred to as ‘cold outreach,’” is “strictly prohibited.”
Blooio frames itself as person-to-person messaging with consent. Its docs warn that unsolicited mass outreach risks Apple-level number bans “that Blooio cannot reverse.” Self-serve numbers are pre-warmed and restocked roughly every 48 hours, so you can claim one without a sales call.
Terms to read before you sign
Blooio’s terms were last updated on October 30, 2026. Three clauses decide what happens when things go wrong:
- Cancelling can cost you the number. When you cancel a self-serve plan, access ends right away and “the number may be released.” If customers know you by that number, plan the move before you cancel.
- Suspension without notice. Blooio can suspend or end API access for violations without notice.
- Apple risk is on you. As above, the terms make the customer responsible for complying with Apple’s restrictions on automated access.
Security, data and model training
Blooio describes “SOC 2-aligned security controls” and a 99.9% uptime target, with contractual availability only on a signed Enterprise order. Linq and Photon both say they hold SOC 2 Type II certification, so if you need an audit report, that’s a real difference to ask about. Blooio says customers can turn off message logging and choose data retention and storage region.
Its privacy policy is direct about data use. Message content and metadata are kept while your account is active and “retained after account closure” for purposes including “product improvement and model training,” and Blooio uses customer data to “train and improve our technology and models.” You can request deletion. When Blooio’s AI agent answers a call, the audio is streamed to OpenAI for speech recognition and responses.
Blooio does train its own models. It publishes a family called Bloobability, small models built on Qwen that check a conversation against rules you write and return probabilities. Requests to those models are processed with zero data retention, according to Blooio.
What customers say
On Trustpilot, Blooio was rated “Average,” 3.5 out of 5 from 8 reviews, when we checked on November 12, 2026. Eight reviews is a small sample, so treat this as color, not a verdict.
The reviews that describe the product are mostly about support and response rates. An October reviewer described “almost instant support, efficient and fast product with simple UI.” A roofing company owner wrote: “I’ve noticed an increase in Responses. Sending blue text is way better than sending green text.” Another reviewer, who switched from a different provider on a friend’s advice, singled out getting “direct support from David, the founder” during onboarding.
Blooio compared with Linq and Photon
| Blooio | Linq | Photon | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main audience | Small businesses, agencies and AI agents | AI agent and consumer app builders | Developers and early-stage startups |
| Reaching new people | Dedicated lines, paced by reply rate; no cold outreach | Not for cold outreach; about 50 new chats a day per line | Business plan: up to 50 new contacts a day per line |
| Reply-only agent line | Yes (Inbound plan) | No separate plan | No separate plan |
| Free option | 20-message trial | Hobby, 20 contacts | Self-host, or 10 users hosted |
| Apple provider list | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | ”SOC 2-aligned” | Type II, it says | Type II, it says |
| Open source | No | No | Yes |
Newer options include Chert, which adds FaceTime calls, messages.dev and ZeroSettle. Blooio and Linq both publish comparison pages about their rivals, and they dispute each other’s claims. Blooio’s own docs include a section headed “Correcting Third-Party Claims About Blooio.” Use vendor comparisons as a list of questions, not answers.
Who Blooio suits
Blooio makes sense when:
- You’re a small business or agency that wants iMessage inside GoHighLevel or HubSpot without a sales process.
- You’re building an AI agent that answers inbound texts and want a dedicated line that can only reply.
- You want Apple Messages for Business and number-based iMessage from one vendor.
Think twice when:
- You may cancel and still need the number. Cancellation can release it immediately.
- You don’t want your messages used to train a vendor’s models, or need a SOC 2 Type II report.
- Your plan involves reaching people who haven’t heard from you. Blooio prohibits it, as do its rivals.
If what you actually want is an AI that answers your business calls and texts back customers, rather than an API to build one, Carly does that without code. Add it to ChatGPT or Claude, pick up a business number, and its agents answer calls, follow up on missed ones by text and reply on WhatsApp. It sends standard SMS rather than iMessage. See missed-call text back and AI text messaging for how that works.
FAQ
Is Blooio an official Apple partner?
Blooio appears on Apple’s list of approved Messages for Business providers, which covers Apple’s official channel for brand conversations. Its number-based iMessage lines are a separate product that Apple hasn’t approved.
How much does Blooio cost?
Plans start at $39 a month for a shared number. The reply-only Inbound line is $98 a month, a dedicated line is $289 a month, and Enterprise lines fall to $195 each at six or more. There’s a free trial with 20 messages.
Does Blooio have a free trial?
Yes. The trial includes 20 messages on a shared number, with no credit card required.
Can Blooio send to Android phones?
Yes. Messages fall back to RCS or SMS when the recipient can’t receive iMessage.
What happens to my number if I cancel Blooio?
Blooio’s terms say cancellation takes effect immediately and the number may be released, so move customers to a new number before you cancel.
Does Blooio have an MCP server?
Yes. Blooio hosts an MCP server that lets ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and other AI clients send, receive and manage messages.
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