Data that arrives earlier in a Zap is not always in a state you can drop straight into a text message. A webhook might hand over a file as a raw string, or a step further back might need a file turned into text before anything else can use it, and sorting that out by hand between steps is the kind of fiddly task nobody wants to repeat for every single Zap run.

Base64 Encoder/Decoder sits in the middle of a Zap and handles that conversion so Mobile Message never has to. Its Decode a Base64 String action turns an encoded string back into plain text that reads properly in an SMS, while Convert a String to Base64, Convert File URL to Base64 and Convert File Data to Base64 handle the reverse for steps further along. Since SMS only carries plain text, the decoding side matters most whenever the goal is a message that reads cleanly on a phone rather than a string of characters nobody can make sense of.