The Best Text Message Marketing Services of 2023

We love that the company’s resources section gives you 65 templates to choose from – far more than most competitors offer. Textedly does charge extra for text personalization, drip campaigns, and automatic replies, but the actual charges are low and one-off. There is a slight learning curve to some of the more advanced features, but the standard functions are simple to operate for novice as well as experienced text marketers.

Textedly has also incorporated a new artificial intelligence copywriting tool into its platform, making it even easier for brands to interact with customers. With SimpleTexting’s AI Assist, users can write a short prompt that includes all the relevant information they want in the text, then click “generate message” and watch as the tool drafts numerous original message suggestions suited for their target audience. From there, users can choose the message they want to send and customize it to their needs, adding links, photos, emojis or additional information.

EZ Texting has partnered with photo library Shutterstock, which provides access to 20 million images that you can use for MMS business messages. There is also an intuitive Canva-like feature built in to help you create branded announcements, invitations and promotions. It has plenty of design templates too, in case you’re not familiar with graphics packages. For those who need help (although the platform is so easy to use that not many will), the EZ Texting website is full of guidance and helpful information.

The platform’s three main pricing plans range from $19 to $49 per month, and each includes 200 outgoing texts and free incoming texts. If you need to send a lot of messages, EZ Texting is expensive compared to other platforms. Unfortunately, your expensive unused text credits don’t roll over from month to month.

There are four plans, which are flexible for any size or type of business. EZ Texting uses a credit system for messages, so you are in control of the volume of messages you want to send and your budget. The Value plan is $24 a month and offers 200 credits at a rate of 4 cents per additional credit. The Custom package costs $374 per month, and while it also includes 200 credits, the rate is only 1 cent per additional credit. Annual plans offer savings of up to 20% per package.

In early March, EZ Texting and Shutterstock announced a partnership that allows EZ Texting users to send MMS picture messages. For no extra cost, EZ Texting customers can now choose from Shutterstock’s collection of millions of royalty-free images to create promotions, announcements and invitations. Users also gain access to an image editor and hundreds of design templates to quickly design an MMS marketing campaign to boost sales, drive engagement and promote their product or service.

The platform is easy to use and has many useful features. Want to customize how SlickText works for your business? With the no-code automation tool on the site, you can build a more personalized texting experience for your subscribers. We like the custom integration with Shopify, and you can connect SlickText to over 1,100 other apps and software platforms via Zapier.

SlickText’s service plans range from $29 per month for 500 texts to $1,999 per month for 100,000. Though not the cheapest, its pricing is competitive, especially given the number of features it includes – and its free mobile app allows you to do almost everything you can do on the central dashboard while on the move.

We like the built-in and programmable appointment reminder service, which is often missing or too difficult to use on other SMS platforms. Your clients can also log on to Thryv and book their own appointments.

Thryv allows customers to see messages from social media, emails, text messages, and now, WebChat messages sent to your website, all in one place. With WebChat, a free service for Thryv users, businesses can gain new customers by allowing them to reach out via their website at any time. In doing so, the customers will be prompted to provide contact information that is stored in the customer relationship management (CRM) or used to update their contact.

You can perform many other business tasks with Thryv, such as managing your social media and Google Business Profile (which includes building citations). It even offers merchant services – allowing you to accept credit and debit card payments – and online video marketing services. Additionally, Thryv recently introduced ThryvPay, a mobile card reader with tap-to-pay integrations using Apple or Google Android operating systems. This new service will allow customers to pay online rather than meeting with business owners in person.

Text message marketing teams can use this new technology to their advantage by communicating with buyers and directing them to the new online payment portal. ThryvPay also allows users to schedule payments online, decreasing the likelihood of forgetting to make a payment. All this makes Thryv a great option for companies that want to run their customer communications, marketing campaigns and management functions from the same platform.

SimpleTexting SMS Template Generator helps small businesses hit the ground running with text marketing campaigns. With over 100 curated templates, users can quickly and easily customize messages, and even customize templates for frequently-sent messages. The feature allows users to send bespoke messages to multiple recipients and engage in two-way texting to follow up with leads and increase reply rates.

Through Zapier, SimpleTexting can connect to thousands of software programs, including the best CRM platforms and top email marketing software. It also offers something that no other text message marketing provider does: It will create free integrations that connect the texting platform to the software packages and apps you use (depending on their complexity) if you are on the $229 monthly service plan or higher.

For us, this makes the $229 plan a hard proposition to turn down, particularly if your business is growing. Growing businesses need seamless integration between the apps and software they use to better meet customers’ demands.

Podium ensures you can launch new text campaigns quickly. You simply choose the list of subscribers you want to get in touch with, create a message for them, and press “send.” Handily, Podium has built templates into the messaging feature that you can use if you prefer. The platform’s tidy and uncluttered layout makes Podium easy to use out of the box. Clearly, an optimal user experience was paramount during the design and development of the service. In case you do need help, though, a link to the Podium website’s knowledge base is permanently placed in the top navigation bar.

The Podium inbox is a central location for all your text, email, Facebook, Instagram and webchat conversations. We like that when you click on a subscriber’s name, you caan see your entire conversation history with them at a glance.

You can also use Podium to ask customers and subscribers to leave reviews of your business. You can even reach out to someone who has left a Google review to thank them directly and ask them to join your mailing list. Podium integrates with most major review platforms.

Podium also offers several marketing automation options, which are available via a newly designed automation dashboard that allows users to browse through a portfolio of prebuilt automation templates. These templates — such as review referral automation and website retargeting automation — quickly and efficiently send relevant marketing messages to customers based on how they interact with a business. In doing so, customers can present their issues and needs without speaking to a real representative. Setting up automation templates is easy, requiring nothing more than selecting automation, customizing it and turning it on with the click of a button.

ProTexting also offers holiday and after-hours SMS auto-replies. Your business can use this to disconnect over the holiday season without leaving your customers hanging. The text messaging service provides options to customize your messages and let people know when you’ll open back up and what they can do in the meantime. With this autoresponder, businesses can choose the date range the responses will arrive, use this feature in conjunction with other automated messages, and share alternative contact information.

An integration with Hubspot allows users to send various image types to their customers. With the addition of MMS (multimedia messaging service) through the HubSpot integration, Protexting users can now add videos or photos to customer messages. MMS enhances the customer experience by adding a visual dimension to the interaction.

We also like that there is an “additional users” feature so teams can easily add sub-users to their accounts. Collaboration is key for text message marketing, and this new feature will allow employees to connect and work together from anywhere. To add a user, you’ll first need to designate a “master user.” All added users will be given their own toll-free number (TFN). If a user is removed, the TFN is returned to the master.

There is a learning curve, however. While some of the features are easy to master, others don’t provide enough on-screen prompts to show new clients how to use them. For those who do run into problems, though, ProTexting offers great customer service. Its customer support is so good that it should give business owners who lack tech savvy or experience in SMS marketing the confidence they need to press ahead. [Take a leaf out of ProTexting’s book with these seven ways to use text messaging for customer service.]

ProTexting offers seven service plans ranging from $49 to $1,119 per month, and you can take advantage of a free trial if you want to test out the features for yourself first. The platform has 19 built-in apps, with 42 add-ons for you to choose from. Most are free, but some cost extra. ProTexting also offers integrations with VerticalResponse, Mailchimp, Amazon ($49 a month), Shopify and Constant Contact.

Twilio recently integrated AI into its platform to create personalized experiences at scale centered around individual customers. Through the use oChat GPT-4’s model, businesses can harness the rich customer data they have on the Segment Customer Data platform, combine it with the generative capabilities of AI to execute more tailored marketing strategies across various channels. With this, businesses can gain a unique understanding of their customers to enhance engagement and offer deeper personalization in customer interactions.

Twilio’s pricing is by far the most competitive we’ve seen. This is a pay-as-you-go service, with SMS texts costing less than a penny each (0.75 cents, to be exact) to send and receive. You can build up your texting platform with extras like clean local numbers for $1 per month, toll-free numbers for $2, and high-volume shortcodes for $1,000. The analytics are second to none, letting you measure your campaign’s performance trends by country, carrier, channel and sender.

Twilio is not ideal for small businesses or growing businesses that can’t afford a development team. It’s best for a business that wants to get big fast (or is already big) and needs a reliable text messaging component to plug directly into the software used to run the company and automate its workflows. [Related article: How Does Workflow Automation Help a Business?]

If your organization has no contact list to start with, Tatango will help you collect phone numbers from other software you may use, including Salesforce, HubSpot, WinRed, Anedot, ActBlue and NationBuilder.

Tatango’s analytics tool is impressively sophisticated. You can see how many people received a particular message, clicked on an embedded link, or made a donation. The platform allows for detailed subscriber segmentation and message automation, and the REST API gives your organization’s developers the tools they need to integrate Tatango with your existing software.

You can load your existing and potential customers’ contact details into Zingle from leading hotel and hospitality platforms you may already use, such as Opera, Springer-Miller, Amadeus, Megasys and Maestro. You can also create service tickets through its integrations with HotSOS and Quore and include message histories in Mindbody customer profiles.

Zingle offers a three-day free trial, during which you can send up to 1,000 messages to test the system.

The TextMagic interface is fluid, clean, and easy to use – but in case you do need help navigating the platform, its website has a generous selection of support articles and videos, and the customer service team is available 18 hours a day on weekdays. TextMagic is built upon a solid REST API framework, meaning that integrations with thousands of other apps and software platforms are available through Zapier.

The intuitive analytics tool provides in-depth analysis of your campaigns’ performance. You can even monitor individual team members’ use of the platform and download reports as CSV or Excel files.

Salesmsg also offers a streamlined inbox navigation system, with an alphabetical organization as well as the ability to search inboxes by name or pin them at the top for easy access. Users can also reply to customers’ text messages via email or a shared inbox. In addition to text messaging, Salesmsg recently added an audio and video messaging functionality, allowing users to record and send audio messages and videos that will render directly in the message timeline.

Customers can use the smart conversation assignment tool to delegate conversations based on message mood and tone, enabling businesses to provide individualized attention to customers for a faster resolution. With the export option, users can save closed conversations for future analysis and recordkeeping purposes.

Salesmsg’s service plans start at $25 per month for 500 credits, ranging up to $249 per month for 7,500 credits. If you want to send more than 10,000 a month, the company will create a custom quote for you.