Yeah, medium to big companies don't advertise a WhatsApp contact number but local businesses do. With the new WhatsApp Business API I'm pretty sure this will change in the near future.

Texts are fine, but as I said above, there're good reasons to not use SMS:

> (1) 0 encryption (2) ISP's full control (3) Doesn't support videocalls (4) Doesn't support neither complex files nor previewing files (5) Doesn't support groups (6) Doesn't support voice messages (7) There're plans which don't include texts so they're not always free

And as I mentioned earlier, here in Spain if you don't have WhatsApp you're literally isolated. I end up using WhatsApp + iMessage but I just.. can't quit WhatsApp.

To sum up, I think it's much harder to ditch WhatsApp than Facebook itself and WhatsApp is too much power for a single company, that's my point :)

Cross-platform rich content over SMS is a bit of a mixed bag. You’re never sure the other party is going to be able to read it properly.

Also SMS doesn’t do group messenging very well.

iMessage would be a great alternative to WA were it cross platform. In EU especially, you’re bound to have a critical mass of your contacts on Android :/