G. Huffington review for Shopify Messaging

I love the email campaigns (although I wish they were prettier). However, the SMS feature should've gone through more rounds of testing before being shared with the public. I've been using a 3rd party text application for two years. When Shopify announced their messaging platform, I was elated because I could keep everything in one place. Well, my happiness quickly flatlined after being approved for messaging and sending my first message to a test group of 8 subscribers. The message took about 13 HOURS to completely send TO 8 SUBSCRIBERS. I was mortified and decided to test my entire sms list (imported from my 3rd party application). The message was time-sensitive. All of my messages are because my store is open once a month for 24 hours. The message had only been delivered to 30 of the near 5000 subscribers by 10 AM the NEXT day after sending it. By noon, it had only been sent to 94 of them. I ended up canceling the second message and have officially deemed the SMS feature USELESS. So much work needs to be completed before giving stores access to this feature. With my 3rd party app, my messages (all of them) are delivered within 1-4 minutes of sending them. I understand Shopify wants everything in-house (because I would love that), but some things just aren't working well enough yet and should be left to the pros until it's ready. It's unfair to the shop owners to get their hopes up and present something so wonky. It's not the well-oiled machines I'm used to dealing with in Shopify.