RCS Best Practices

This page provides best practices for designing effective RCS experiences with the Vonage Messages API.

Follow Logo and Banner Image Guidelines

To ensure the best user experience possible, we recommend you follow these guidelines for your logo and banner images.

Run a Device Capability Check

A capability check can be performed to ascertain whether the target device supports RCS messaging features; we recommend you do so before starting a conversation with a user. See the RCS Device Capability Check guide here for more information.

Follow Message and Media Size Limits

See Message and Media Sizes for information on limits and guidelines such as text character limitations and maximum message and media file sizes.

Keep Messages in Order

When sending multiple messages to a user, you should ensure the user receives them in order for the best possible experience. Ensure that users receive messages in the correct order by waiting for a delivered status to be sent to your Status Webhook before sending the next message.

Implement Retries with Exponential Backoff

API calls can fail for many reasons, including service overload, QPS limits, infrastructure issues, and other errors. We recommend using retries with exponential backoff to recover from these errors, where your infrastructure automatically follows these steps:

  1. Determine that an API call has failed.
  2. Set the initial wait duration and the maximum number of retries.
  3. Pause for the wait duration.
  4. Retry the API call.
  5. Depending on the API response:
  • If a success, proceeds with the next step in the workflow.
  • If a failure, increases the wait duration and returns to step 3.
  • If a failure after the maximum number of retries, enters a fail state.

The best wait duration and the maximum number of retries can vary; you should determine these numbers based on your infrastructure and workflow latency requirements.