The Best Text Message Marketing Services of 2024

Textline is our best pick for larger businesses because it has the advanced features needed to address multiple audiences at scale. Tools like group messaging and mass surveys make it easy to engage with audiences you can segment for more successful campaigns. The clever automation tools are customizable and help you get the most out of text message marketing.

Textline has three pricing plans that start at a somewhat higher rate than many of the other text message marketing services we reviewed. However, the value you get for the money is clear, especially if you’re managing a large audience.

Textline offers an intuitive, user-friendly experience, helping streamline the demanding task of crafting multiple text message marketing campaigns for a variety of client groups. Unlike most other platforms, however, there are no inclusive messages within any of their subscription packages. No matter your service plan, you pay separately for inbound and outbound SMS and MMS messages.

Big businesses handle more data and that’s a real point of separation for Textline. Its HIPAA compliance makes it a bolt-on solution for healthcare businesses while its wider security features like CCPA and GDPR compliance provide comfort to enterprise-level companies, especially those handling confidential and personal data.

HIPAA compliance is built into Textline along with many other important security features Source: Textline

Textedly offers one of the lowest per-text prices of the major text messaging platforms on the market, but don’t mistake cheap for substandard. On Textedly’s cheapest service plan, the equivalent price per text (including the subscription fee) is 1.7 cents. Other plans offer great value to like 10,000 texts for $249 a month. If you pay annually, you get 20 percent more texts per month.

Composing new messages and choosing who to send them to is easy with Textedly Source: Textedly

With Textedly, you can easily build lists, have two-way conversations with clients, run bulk campaigns and link up to dozens of popular apps like Salesforce. We appreciate how well Textedly handles the ability to communicate with customers one-on-one over more than text messaging ― you can also have conversations via Facebook, WhatsApp and the website chatbot. It’s also one of the few platforms that allow you to text customers directly from your Instagram business profile.

New to the platform is a clever text-based system for managing Google, Yelp and other online reviews. For hyperlocal businesses where reviews are critical, using this tool could help you boost visibility and sales.

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.

EZ Texting is an exceptionally intuitive text messaging platform full of useful tools. We like that nontechnical business owners and those with little or no marketing experience should have little trouble using the software.

An aspect of EZ Texting that we particularly like is its vast array of industry-specific content to give you ideas for your marketing campaigns. Additionally, there is an excellent template library to get you started, and we like how the generative AI tool is integrated directly into the messaging apps within EZ Texting.

EZ Texting is partnered with Shutterstock, giving you access to 20 million royalty-free 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.

In EZ Texting, you can select from over 2 million royalty-free images for use in your MMS campaigns. Source: EZ Texting

The platform’s three main service plans range from $25 to $125 per month and each includes 500 outgoing texts. There is a fourth Enterprise plan at $3,000 a month, which includes 200,000 outgoing texts. You have to pay for every additional message over the limit but the pricing is very competitive. EZ Texting is not the cheapest but it does offer excellent functionality that’s easy to use, which may make the extra cost worth it for many company owners.

What makes the easy-to-use, feature-packed SlickText stand out from the crowd is its very customer-centered onboarding approach. When you sign up for any of its paid plans over $139 a month, you get a free onboarding session with a member of SlickText’s client success team. For service plans under that amount, there is a small fee for onboarding support.

After onboarding, client success agents are available to help you optimize the platform further and develop a text message marketing strategy. We also appreciate the large knowledge base on SlickText’s website and its clearly written instructions on topics ranging from getting started to creating surveys.

Set up drip campaigns to new subscribers in SlickText to build customer relationships and prompt interactions. Source: SlickText

The no-code automation tool on the site makes it easy to build a more personalized texting experience for subscribers. We like the custom integration with Shopify, HubSpot and various email marketing platforms, 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 $1,250 per month for 50,000 and unused texts roll over to the following month. Although 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.

ProTexting is a popular choice for businesses, charities and schools that want to communicate individually and en masse with customers, donors, students and parents.

The platform offers a great set of features you can use to build up and segment your subscribers quickly and effectively. Use tools like the “Text Me” button so customers can subscribe directly from your website. ProTexting can also segment customers automatically by location, ZIP code and more as well as by keyword. For deeper personalization, add custom fields (like “VIP” for high-spending customers) to segment clients using whatever criteria you choose for even more precise campaign targeting.

Beyond that, there’s a lot more to love about this platform. You can send individual or group text messages to your subscribers immediately or at a scheduled time and date you set from your desktop or the mobile app. ProTexting also offers holiday and after-hours SMS auto-replies so customers are attended to even if you’re closed.

You can automate responses sent to customers by the day of the week and the time in ProTexting. Source: ProTexting

The integration with Shopify is great for abandoned shopping carts. We appreciate its HubSpot integration too, especially for sending videos and photos by SMS.

There is a learning curve when you first use the platform, however, ProTexting offers great customer service, especially over the phone, so the help is there when you need it. There are 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.

Thryv is an excellent tool for building a text message subscriber list that you can then use to promote your services to consumers and businesses in the local community. However, Thryv offers much more.

The company’s Command Center is a free-to-use communication hub that provides a centralized platform for all communication between SMBs and their customers. Texts, emails, phone calls and videos are consolidated into a single conversation for each customer, making it a very capable light CRM.

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

Cut back on missed appointments by asking customers to confirm their attendance in advance. Source: Thryv

You can perform many other business tasks with Thryv, such as managing your social media and Google Business Profile, which includes building citations. It offers merchant services ― allowing you to accept credit and debit card payments ― and online video marketing services.

Taking all of its features together, Thryv is a great option for companies that want to run their customer communications, marketing campaigns and management functions from the same platform.

We chose SimpleTexting as the best platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its competitive pricing and its wide range of customizable and easy-to-use features and tools that help smaller firms make the most of text marketing.

With over 100 curated templates, users can customize messages, as well as templates for frequently sent messages, quickly and easily. Alternatively, you can use the smart SMS Template Generator to create templates unique to your company.

We liked the Inbox on the platform. You can use it to send bespoke messages to multiple recipients and engage in two-way texting conversations with people who reach out to you. This centralization makes following up inquiries easy and should lead to increased conversion rates.

The analytics are in-depth, but we found them to be easy for a new user to understand. Launching campaigns, adding custom fields to your subscriber lists and segmenting clients for better-targeted marketing campaigns are all simple processes.

Although not as in-depth as on other platforms, small businesses can use the analytics on SimpleTexting to determine which campaigns worked best. Source: SimpleTexting

Through Zapier, SimpleTexting can connect to thousands of software programs, including the best customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and top email marketing software. We also really appreciate how the programming team will build custom integrations for a low fee – this is unique among the services we reviewed.

SimpleTexting provides a range of competitively priced service plans, ranging from $29 per month for 500 texts to $909 per month for 50,000 texts.  A custom Enterprise plan is available if you need more than 50,000 texts a month.

Podium is an all-in-one text message marketing and online review management system that starts at $399 a month. It’s a particular favorite for businesses that serve their local communities from restaurants and plumbers to car dealerships and retailers because of its array of features, such as its centralized multichannel communications platform, video chat and credit and debit card processing. [Related article: What is a merchant account?]

We like how easy Podium makes text message marketing. Choose the list of subscribers you want to get in touch with, create a message for them either yourself or with the help of AI and press “send.” Podium also has templates built into the messaging feature that you can use if you prefer. You can make the platform’s inbox a central location for all your text, phone, email, Facebook, Instagram and webchat conversations.

Setting up inbox rules so that the best-placed person to help a client receives an incoming message in Podium. Source: Podium

The platform is great for automating workflows too. It includes a portfolio of prebuilt automation templates for tasks like review referrals and website retargeting that can be adapted to your specific business needs. We were impressed with Podium’s marketplace, which has over 200 apps to add further functionality to the platform.

In addition to its text message capabilities, Podium can be used to gather online reviews for your business. You can 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.

Twilio is the most developer-friendly text messaging platform we found in our research. It’s the type of platform that fast-scaling businesses will appreciate because it offers all the tools needed to integrate the messaging platform with your company’s software ecosystem.

AI is smartly used on the platform for client engagement. When deployed, we were impressed with how it gives you a unique understanding of your customers, which can be used to deliver deeper personalization in marketing campaigns and two-way interactions.

Another great feature is Unified Profiles, which streamlines data collection for businesses by gathering customer information from multiple sources in one place. It consolidates engagement information like customer preferences, past interactions and behaviors to help businesses offer more personalized experiences.

The range of reporting and analytics at the team and agent level is impressive too. Whether customers get in touch via text or another channel, you can keep track of a wide range of metrics from customer retention rates and first contact resolution rates to the number of waiting and active tasks overall and by department and agent.

The API documentation to help you customize Twilio is helpful and comprehensive. Source: Twilio

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 (79 cents to be exact) to send and receive (MMS messages cost 2 cents outbound and 1 cent inbound). The platform is best for companies that want to get big fast (or are already big) and need 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?]

TextMarks, formerly a general-purpose business-to-business text messaging provider, has transformed itself to become a provider of specialized time-sensitive, on-demand SMS communication solutions to transit agencies. The three key benefits of their service to end users — people catching buses, light rail and streetcars — are real-time transit updates, no need to download a specific smartphone app and up-to-the-minute information during disruptions.

For passengers, getting the information they need is straightforward. They send a text message that contains a specific keyword and their bus stop number. Almost immediately, they get back real-time information on upcoming arrival times to the stop. The service is free to end users.

If you’re considering this for your agency or company, you’ll first need to integrate your server with the TextMarks system. When a rider sends a text, the system performs a search on your server for the information. To keep schedules up to date, you can program in updates to schedules or route changes. We like how TextMarks offers client libraries for .NET, Java, PHP and Python to speed up and simplify integration.

Prices for the system start at $199 a month plus text messaging charges.