Does your friend group include both iPhones and Androids? From experience, any group chat that includes both is going to result in splits (like in IRC), message

Does your friend group include both iPhones and Androids? From experience, any group chat that includes both is going to result in splits (like in IRC), messages simply not going through, and messages arriving multiple days late. In addition, they don’t have the usability features that you get from apps, like read receipts, or being able to add a person to a group message and them being able to see the entire history. EDIT: That said, you don’t need a $1000 iPhone. A $200 used smartphone (easily found for iPhone or Android) is good enough.