How to Send iMessage Inside HighLevel Workflows: Inside Blooio's Spotlight Session

Most businesses still run their customer conversations on technology that's over 30 years old. On HighLevel's latest Spotlight Session, Blooio co-founders David and Aria Afshar sat down with host Paulson to explain why that's worth fixing — and how agencies are wiring real, blue-bubble iMessage inside HighLevel workflows to double response rates without touching A2P registration.

You can watch the full conversation on YouTube, listen on Apple Podcasts, or read the HighLevel recap here. Below is everything covered in the session, distilled into a practical guide.

The origin story: a roofing client that doubled its response rate

Back in late 2024, David was running a GoHighLevel marketing agency that helped small and mid-sized businesses structure their entire lead cycle — from new lead to conversion. One San Diego client had a recurring problem: their salespeople kept texting leads from personal iPhones instead of the CRM. Nothing got tracked, leads fell through the cracks, and the owner couldn't see where each deal stood.

When the team asked the reps why they wouldn't stop, the answer was the lightbulb moment: "We're using our phones to actually build a relationship with the lead." Texts sent from a real iPhone — blue bubbles — got far more replies than CRM-sent SMS.

So they tested it. They bought a phone, wrote an API as a proof of concept, and routed a roofing client's conversations through it. The result:

• The response rate doubled
• Leads replied because they knew a real human was on the other end
• Clients started asking to pay for it before it was even a product

Why blue bubbles convert: the psychology of iMessage

Apple has spent more than a decade training people to trust the blue bubble. As David put it in the session, when someone sees an iMessage they assume they're texting a real human — so they feel almost obligated to reply. A green-bubble SMS, by contrast, is now mentally filed next to spam, fake DMV texts, and mass marketing blasts.

Blooio leans into that trust with details that make conversations feel genuinely human:

• Typing indicators that scale with message length — a longer reply shows a longer "typing…" bubble
• Native read receipts, voice notes, videos, and photos — not stripped-down SMS
• Real two-way conversations that live right inside HighLevel

P2P vs A2P: the part most agencies get wrong

A lot of the session was spent demystifying messaging regulation, because it's where most HighLevel agencies get stuck. Here's the short version.

A2P (application-to-peer) is for broadcasting — think a weekend coupon blast to a list. It requires A2P registration, the right website verbiage and privacy policy, and it's governed by the ATP/10DLC rules introduced to stop spammers spraying numbers from Twilio-style providers. The unintended consequence: legitimate business owners who just want personal, one-to-one conversations get punished for the spammers' behavior.

P2P (peer-to-peer) is an intimate, one-to-one conversation — exactly what a 3-4 person business owner wants when texting a lead. That's where Blooio comes in. No A2P approval gauntlet, no waiting on the "ATP gods," and no waking up to a flagged, suspended number.

For teams that need both, Blooio offers a hybrid mode that combines A2P broadcasting with P2P conversations. We broke that pattern down in detail in Hybrid Mode: SMS cold outbound + iMessage replies.

How it works inside HighLevel

The biggest differentiator David highlighted: everything stays inside HighLevel. Having run a GHL agency himself, he knew clients hate signing up for yet another app, installing a Chrome extension, or jumping to a separate dashboard. So Blooio was built to live natively in the CRM.

• Send and receive iMessage natively in the HighLevel conversations view
• Call and receive calls from your Blooio numbers — compatible with the HighLevel dialer, call recordings, transcriptions, call forwarding, and IVR
• Works with white-labeled HighLevel apps, including on the phone
• No Chrome plugin, no second inbox — it just shows up where your team already works

In the live demo, David texted a lead, a HighLevel workflow kicked in automatically, and the reply landed natively on both the phone and inside GHL — typing indicators, photos, and videos included. For the full setup walkthrough, see our iMessage for GoHighLevel guide and the HighLevel integration.

The fallback protocol: never lose a message

Blooio isn't only iMessage. If you text someone who isn't on an iPhone, it automatically flips to RCS (the Android protocol), and if RCS fails, it falls back to SMS. That means high-fidelity messages and international reach no matter what device the recipient is on — a single thread that degrades gracefully instead of dropping content.

Transparent pricing — no per-text gotchas

One thing Aria stressed: Blooio publishes its pricing openly because, as a bootstrapped company, there are no investors forcing price hikes.

• Plans start as low as $39/month for a starter line
• A free trial with 20 free messages — no credit card required
• Dedicated lines scale up to around $89/line, with volume breaks
• Custom enterprise plans for high-volume partners
• Billed per number (not per text) because Blooio supports rich media like iMessage — more akin to a cellular plan than Twilio's per-message model

For an agency with several clients, pricing is based on volume, not headcount — so a single operator with ten clients often needs just one line. You can see the full breakdown on the Blooio pricing page.

Real results: A1 Media and Anew

Trust came up repeatedly in the session — and the founders pointed to customers rather than claims. Enzo at A1 Media runs a HighLevel agency in the insurance and finance space, where getting an A2P number approved is notoriously hard. Running on physical iPhones distributed across the country, his messages can't be read or flagged by Apple, so they don't get penalized — letting him launch at scale across seven lines and multiple clients.

Outside the HighLevel world, the founders highlighted Anew, an AI agent that lives inside iMessage. Blooio's API connects iMessage to their agent, and they scaled to 139,000 messages in just 60 days — without ever touching physical phones or messaging infrastructure.

What's coming next

The founders closed with where Blooio is heading: a unified messaging channel for businesses, with more iMessage feature parity, deeper AI capabilities, and new channels. Highlights from the roadmap:

• WhatsApp support coming soon, alongside continued expansion to wherever the market needs it
• AI recommendations (early-stage, on enterprise plans) that coach you on avoiding spam flags, improving response rates, and shortening response times
• More agentic use cases — workflows that can run a conversation end-to-end, including closing the lead
• Integrations with Zapier, Make.com, and custom stacks, then routing conversations back into HighLevel to track the sales cycle

Because Blooio owns the entire stack — hardware and software, vertically integrated — the team can move fast and ship product improvements based on customer feedback almost daily.

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