Text Messaging vs Android

Hello all.

Currently I use my iPhone 4s for personal use and I have a Droid X that I use for business. I am thinking about ditching the X and going to iPhone for both, but I have one issue.

I have many employees that I schedule through text message. Typically I'll send a mass text to 10 of them at a time and say "Are you available Friday at 3pm"

When they respond on the droid, I get a response, plus my original message. Their response and any subsequent responses from me go to them ONLY. For example if I sent "Work tomorrow at 3pm" to 10 people it would look like this:

Me: "Work tomorrow at 3pm"
Response person A: "Work tomorrow at 3pm"
"Ok I'll be there"

With the iPhone it will look like this:

Me: "Work tomorrow at 3pm"
Response person A: "Ok Ill be there"

So basically, if I send a mass text in the iPhone, the responses wont include my original message, so Ill have no idea what they are confirming to. Is there a way to have the iphone behave like android in this respect?

 

Correct. However, their response shows up as a new message and does not include my original message, which is what I require.

 

Does anyone have any experience with 3rd party SMS apps?

 

I dont want the others in the group to see anything. I just want the original message that I send to be in the conversation when they reply.

Secondly, even with group messaging turned on it doesnt function that way. As far as I can tell turning on group messaging does nothing but make it a MMS (been testing it for a while with 3 phones now)

 

It doesnt work, but regardless that is not what I am trying to achieve.

All I am trying to do, is have everyone's response to the group message show my original message. Right now, if I just send 10 people a message, when they respond they will be in individual threads (which I want) but the first message in the thread will be their response, not my original message.

 

Would that function as I need? I have a separate phone for work.