The Top Messaging Apps per Country

If you’re thinking about adding text messaging to your marketing campaigns, you might be overwhelmed with the number of platforms your clients may use to receive short-message-service (SMS) or multimedia-message-service (MMS) messages. People in different parts of the world use a variety of platforms.  WhatsApp is the most popular service in India, while most users in the U.S. still use the native SMS text capabilities of their mobile phones.

SMS messages are limited to 160 characters and cost less to send than larger MMS messages. MMS messages, however, can include audio, video, GIFs and complicated graphics, among other rich media components. Your audience and campaign goals will provide direction for the best text vehicle, but what are your choices?

The “best” text messaging system depends on where your audience lives and what their preferred app is. Here is a summary of the most popular apps around the world:

As you can see, Facebook Messenger is the top app in North America and Australia, WhatsApp is most popular in most of South America, Russia, India and parts of Africa, and WeChat is the leader in China. If your company is based in the United States, you might not be familiar with apps like Viber, Telegram, Line, Discord, KakaoTalk, Phoenix, or Zalo, but if you’re trying to reach customers in certain countries, you may need to become familiar with their favorites.

Here are the most popular social media platforms in the United States as of Jan. 2020:

As you can see Facebook Messenger is the preferred app for those in the U.S. – that does not include the majority who are using the native texting capabilities on their mobile phones.

Here are the top messaging apps in selected countries outside the U.S[HR3] .:

Here is a breakdown of countries with the highest Facebook users:

WhatsApp also is one of the most popular apps in the world, so here is a breakdown of the top countries using WhatsApp:

Few companies have a budget that allows them to send unlimited texts to any particular app, so it is a best practice to narrow your selection to the best potential customers.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

The SMS-Magic team works every day to make building effective campaigns easy. SMS-Magic works with all the messaging apps, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are! We would be excited to share our experience and help you decide what is best for you.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you build and automate your text messaging campaigns!