What is the difference between a phone number and an email sender?

Unlike other popular messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, iMessage supports sending and receiving messages via email address.

If you open Settings -> Apps -> Messages -> Send & Receive on your iPhone, you'll see that you can also choose what you use to send and receive messages.

LoopMessage offers the same option: you can use email, phone number, or both.

Is there any difference when used in production?

Email

Cons:

• In our experience, Apple is more strict with email-only senders. This means you'll need more time to warm it up (up to a 1-2 months) before it can handle many daily conversations.
• Whenever Apple makes any pereodic updates to its message delivery algorithms, it always impacts email-only senders first.
• For some users, it is not obvious that they can send an iMessage to an email address.

Pros:

• You can use your personal brand in the name. You can even use a corporate domain (requires additional preparation).
• If you need to isolate a conversation only to iMessage users, this is a perfect option, as Android users can't send iMessage/RCS to email.

Phone number

Cons:

• Requires additional costs, as it requires issuing and maintaining a phone number that will be connected to iMessage.

Pros:

• Phone numbers can be used much faster in production. A number only needs to be 1-2 weeks old before you can have good deliverability.
• Phone numbers are almost never affected by issues related to Apple's periodic delivery algorithm updates.
• You can add SMS fallback and call forwarding options so your number supports all the necessary cell features.
• You can register this number in other messengers or services where your users can also interact with it.
• Easy to ask a user to initiate a conversation. You can simply share your phone number with them or post it on your website.

Updated on: 18/04/2026