When comparing Textra vs Messenger, the Slant community recommends Textra for most people. In the question“What are the best SMS apps for Android?” Textra is ranked 2nd while Messenger is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Textra is:
Clean, minimalist design.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Sleek design
Clean, minimalist design.
Pro Allows responding to SMS without opening the app
When a new sms is received, a window will pop up that has the message and allows answering it from there, without having to open the app.
Pro Can schedule messages
SMS & MMS can be set to go out at certain times.
Pro Personalization
Can change colors of apps UI and customize for specific conversations.
Pro Works with Pushbullet for SMS replies
Pro Uses Facebook friends to create a contacts list
Allows communicating with anyone who's a friend on Facebook.
Pro Read receipts
Can see who has seen each message in group messages.
Pro Easy to share posts from Facebook
Integration with Facebook makes it easy to share any interesting posts from the Facebook timeline.
Pro Great UI
User interface of the application is clean, intuitive and easy to overview.
Cons
Con Only SMS / MMS
Lacks data messaging.
Con Lack of privacy
Messenger is owned by Facebook. Based on their privacy policy, this means that any information you provide (including messages sent) are used by Facebook to profile you and sell access to your data to advertisers.
Con Lack of end-to-end encryption
Secret (end-to-end encrypted) chats are only supported in one-to-one messages, and are not enabled by default, and the encryption has not been verified independently.