School messaging app Remind will soon face a major disruption to its texting service, after communications giant Verizon announced that it will charge an additional fee on all SMS messages sent by the company.
Remind, which reports 30 million users in the United States, is one of several messaging apps designed to provide easier communication between teachers, administrators, parents, and students. The company offers a free plan that teachers can use for their classrooms and a school and district plan that organizations pay for.
The additional charge will be imposed on services that send texts through app-based platforms, including Remind, to underwrite Verizon’s cost of providing protections against robotexting services that use these same text-to-app messages. Other companies that provide app-to-text services, like communications platform Twilio, will also be affected.
Remind says the price increase per text will make the free SMS service impossible to sustain for Verizon customers.
