Message Plus - SMS Messager

Review by eFreeware

Most texting apps treat the interface as fixed: you get the layout the developer chose, and that's that. Message Plus takes the opposite approach, letting you decide how conversations look, with theme options, different bubble shapes, emoji styles, stickers and GIFs. That alone is the most distinctive thing about it, and it's the reason I'd expect a certain kind of user to give it a try.

It's a free SMS and MMS app from Dovi AI, sitting in the Communication category and rated for Everyone. It has passed 100,000 installs and holds a 4.1 average from 1,038 ratings, with the current build dated September 17, 2026. The app arrived on the store in March 2024, so it has had a couple of years of iterations behind it.

If you send a lot of plain texts and find your phone's stock messenger dull or limited, this is aimed at you. It's also for people who want to schedule messages ahead of time, filter junk by keyword, or keep certain conversations out of sight. It is not trying to replace a full chat platform; it is a text-message app through and through.

What you actually get day to day

Underneath the cosmetics, this is a standard SMS and MMS client. You send and receive texts, including picture and media messages, and the developer promises a clear layout with responsive performance. Your conversations happen over the same SMS and MMS channels your carrier already handles.

The customization extends past themes. You can change text bubble styles, pick different emoji treatments, and use a library of stickers and GIFs inside your conversations. Light and night modes cover the display, so the app can follow your preference for a bright or dark look. For anyone who has ever wanted their message threads to look less like everyone else's, these are the settings worth exploring first.

The app is also organized around sorting. The developer describes a smart classification system that arranges incoming texts automatically, so important threads are easier to find among the rest. Combined with group messaging, that makes the app reasonably comfortable for both personal and work communication, which is the territory it claims to cover.

Group threads and messages sent on your schedule

Group messaging here covers SMS and MMS sent to several contacts at once. The developer pitches it for team updates, planning an event, or sharing news with a wider circle, and that framing makes sense: if your contacts are spread across different phones and platforms, a group text is often the only thing that reaches all of them. Family gatherings and work coordination are the two scenarios the app leans on.

Scheduling is the other feature I'd single out. You can compose a message and set it to go out later, which the developer suggests for birthday wishes, work reminders and holiday greetings. The appeal is obvious for anyone who remembers an occasion at an inconvenient hour or wants a reminder to land at a sensible time rather than in the middle of the night.

Neither feature is exotic, but together they cover the two most common reasons people go looking for a replacement messaging app: reaching several people at once, and not having to be at your phone at the exact moment a message should arrive. The scheduled sending in particular is the sort of thing that quietly changes how you handle recurring obligations.

Privacy controls and cutting down on junk

Privacy is treated as a headline feature rather than an afterthought. The app offers encryption for private conversations, with the ability to hide important messages so only you can open them. Notification settings go further, letting you suppress the sender's name or the message content on the lock screen. For anyone who gets sensitive texts at work or in shared spaces, those two options are the practical part of the package.

On the nuisance side, the app blocks unwanted messages and calls, and it goes beyond simple number blocking by letting you set keywords that filter incoming texts. That's a more flexible approach than a static blocklist, since spam tends to arrive from fresh numbers each time. A keyword like a recurring promotional phrase can catch messages that a blocklist would miss entirely.

The combination is coherent: keep the conversations you care about out of sight, and keep the ones you don't care about out of your inbox. I'd expect the keyword filtering to need a little tuning at the start, since filters only work as well as the words you feed them, but the mechanism itself is sound.

What it asks of you, and what to weigh

Every feature is free, with no premium subscription and no hidden charges. The app contains ads and offers in-app purchases. If you dislike advertising in a messaging app, factor that in before you commit to it as your daily driver.

The other consideration is scope. This is an SMS and MMS app, so its usefulness depends on the people you message being reachable by text. If your conversations mostly happen inside a dedicated chat platform, the customization and filtering here won't have much to work on. The app is at its best when text messaging is genuinely how you stay in touch.

There's also the nature of customization itself. Themes, bubble styles and emoji treatments are only worth having if you enjoy setting them up; the defaults will do the job for anyone who doesn't. And the recent update is described simply as an optimization of the messaging experience, so there's no new headline feature to rush toward in this build.

Where this app fits best

I'd point this at people who text a lot and want the experience to feel more personal. If you've grown tired of a plain default messenger and want control over how threads look, the theme, bubble and emoji options here are the main draw. It's a reasonable fit for someone who likes tinkering with appearance settings and would actually use them.

It also suits anyone dealing with a steady stream of unwanted texts. The keyword filtering and call blocking address a real annoyance, and the notification privacy options are useful for people who read messages in public or share a device. Those are the users who will get the most out of what the app emphasizes.

Finally, it works for people who coordinate in groups and need messages to arrive at a chosen time. Group texts to family or colleagues, plus scheduled sending for reminders and occasions, cover a lot of ordinary communication without needing anything more elaborate. The app is built for that everyday ground, and it stays there.

A free text app with real customization

Message Plus is a sensible install if you want your SMS and MMS to look and behave differently from the stock option, and you're comfortable with ads and in-app purchases in exchange for a free app. The customization, group messaging, scheduling and keyword-based filtering form a coherent set of features rather than a scattered list, and the privacy controls are more developed than I'd expect at this price point.

The people most likely to keep it are heavy texters who enjoy personalizing their interface, anyone fighting a losing battle against spam texts, and households or small teams that coordinate by group message. If your messaging life happens elsewhere, the app's strengths won't have much to act on.

The developer's claim that everything is free sits alongside the store's ads and purchase flags, so go in with that expectation set. Beyond that, the feature set is broad enough for daily use, and the 4.1 rating from over a thousand reviewers suggests a fair number of people have settled into it.

What's new in version 2.2.85

1. Optimize the messaging experience