A little over a year ago I was fortunate to make it onto the beta testing team for Beeper. TL;DR Beeper is a unified chat application (i.e. all major chat applications, including SMS, in one app). Beeper recently announced that their basic service is now free https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-is-now-free. However, they will be slowly working their way through a wait list. The convenience of this service can’t be understated. Also, encrypted services such as Signal are supported. Just go to https://www.beeper.com/ and click the ‘Get started’ button to join the wait list.