I'm very tired of SMS being horrible and necessary. Matrix has a bridge for SMS, but it doesn't work very well. There's other SMS bridges, no idea how well they work.
Does anyone have a good solution for dealing with SMS?
You could consider using something like jmp.chat. It delivers SMS via XMPP (aka jabber), so you could self-host a XMPP server and receive SMS that way. It also has some support for MMS (group chat, media), but my experience with it was mixed (I used it for about 3-4 years).
No, but basically jmp.chat takes over your phone number... it acts as your carrier for voice and SMS (similar to Google Voice). Maybe not exactly what you want.
You can use JMP to communicate with your contacts without them changing anything on their end, just like with any other telephone provider. JMP works wherever you have an Internet connection. JMP can be used alongside, or instead of, a traditional wireless carrier subscription.
The benefit of this is that you can receive voice and text on anything that can serve as a XMPP client.