RCS Builder’s Log: How Many Cards Are Too Many?

RCS Builder’s Log: How Many Cards Are Too Many?

The art of knowing when to stop

A carousel can take a minimum of two cards and a maximum of ten. But what’s the sweet spot? Just because the protocol allows ten cards doesn’t mean you should use them. Most of the time, two or three is plenty. The hard part isn’t filling space—it’s choosing what earns it.

Lesson Learned

Outside of something like listing all ConnectMobile speakers, there are very few good reasons to use all ten cards. The same truism applies here as in life: You don’t need more choices, just confidence in the ones you have.

As user experience designers, that’s the hard part—figuring out which choice to show in the good/better/best model. It’s one of those few decisions that can make or break a product experience.

To quote Marty Cagan:

“Product management is all about choices—making decisions about what opportunities are worth chasing, which problems are worth solving, what features will provide the most value, what the best time-to-market trade-offs are, and which customers are most important. While you’ll never make all the right choices, you have to make most of them right for your product to succeed.”

Historical Context

Carousel overload isn’t new. We saw it in early web design and again in mobile app menus. More options don’t mean better engagement. In messaging, simplicity wins faster attention and cleaner interaction loops.

What’s Next

For this round, iOS takes the win on execution. If you have to use more than three cards, then swiping the cards feels more natural (and less annoying) than scrolling left to right. 

RCS Builder’s Log is my running series of notes, takeaways, and experiments from building and deploying RCS in the wild. Every experiment reveals a limit or expands a range; finding them is half the fun.