When comparing Bolt vs Pulse SMS, the Slant community recommends Pulse SMS for most people. In the question“What are the best messaging apps for Android?” Pulse SMS is ranked 17th while Bolt is ranked 42nd.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro One tap photo and video sharing
Tap a contact to take a picture, tap and hold a contact to record video. Tapping the screen will allow you to add text to photos and videos just taken.
Pro One-to-one conversations increase chance of feedback
Limiting conversations to only two parties increases the likelihood of getting a response.
Pro Multi-platform/Unified Messaging
Pro Open-source
Pro Per-Conversation Customization
Pro One-time fee
Pro Good Material Design UI
Pro Encrypted messaging content on devices
Pro You can use the iOS app as long as you know how to sideload it
It is on GitHub and there's a way to sideload it with Cydia impactor and appsigner.io
Cons
Con Only available in select countries
Bolt is limited to New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa.
Con No groups
Bolt only allows one-to-one communications.
Con No RCS support
But only Messages has that.
Con Inconsistent and intermittently unreliable syncing with web app.
Forgets password periodically - dev insists that it doesn't do this - but it does.
Despite syncing via cloud there is no backup option.
Con The web and pc clients haven't been updated in almost a year. No support for gifs in the web or pc clients. Sometimes the web and pc clients are unable to login or do not sync messages.
Con Lacks support for UWP on Windows 10
UWP apps aren't hard to build - Luke K could bring his app to the Windows Store easily and make a TON of people happy at work.
