Textedly Review and Pricing

Why We Chose Textedly for Simple Texting Needs

If you’re looking for a text message marketing system that can handle the basics, Textedly is worthy of consideration. While it doesn’t have the breadth of functionality that some companies might need, it performs basic functions well for an affordable price. And, as with some fancier platforms, you can use Zapier to integrate Textedly with your current business software. 

Textedly is an ideal option for businesses that want to build subscriber lists and send occasional offers to customers via text. Plus, it’s hard not to recommend Textedly purely on price. On the lowest plan, considering subscription costs, the cost per text is 5.2 cents. If you sign up for 5,000 texts per month for $139, you’ll pay less — 2.8 cents per text — and even less if you pay annually in advance.

Smaller businesses that serve a few thousand customers (at most) within a restricted geographical area will benefit from Textedly. Additionally, many businesses will appreciate Textedly’s online review management capabilities and pay-by-text functionality, which can help you prompt customers to pay. For these reasons and more, Textedly is our choice for the best text messaging platform for businesses with simple texting needs.

Ease of Use

Textedly is a browser-based platform that’s easy to use overall, but it has a few caveats. The main screen’s layout is neat but busy. From the navigation menu on the left, you can access subscribers, send messages, view message history, add and delete keywords, add new numbers, view reports and enable voice calls.

When you select some features, a filtering option appears next to the navigation bar, making the screen feel cluttered. Additionally, some tools are hard to find, and when you do find them, it’s not clear how to use them. The interface is quite refined and user-centric, but it could benefit from more development to increase its intuitiveness.

To migrate your contacts from another text message marketing service, you must first ask Textedly for permission. When you have the vendor’s approval, you can upload your current subscriber list via a CSV file. This process could be simplified with an online signing tool.

Textedly provides a Help Center and a webchat for tips on using the platform and troubleshooting issues. It’s a bit hard to find on the website, but it’s easy to access on the platform by clicking the black circle on the bottom right. 

With less than 50 pages, Textedly’s knowledge base is the sparsest of all the systems we reviewed. For example, Podium, SimpleTexting and ProTexting all have knowledge bases with over 100 entries. That said, Textedly’s content is clearly written and thoroughly explains how to perform various tasks. There is also an informative blog and several helpful YouTube videos that, strangely, aren’t linked to the control panel and haven’t been recently updated. 

At this time, Textedly doesn’t have a mobile app. To organize campaigns while on the go, you’ll need a large tablet or laptop with a SIM card.

Features

When it comes to SMS for business, Textedly may not be as feature-rich as many rivals. Still, it comes with the key functions businesses need to message existing customers and potential clients.

Message Generation

We like how easy Textedly makes it to quickly compose and send text messages to your customers. The message interface is similar to other platforms we reviewed, but we appreciate how accessible this feature is right from the top menu bar. If you want to send a message to one person, search for that subscriber. One-on-one messaging is a great way to use texting for customer service. You can also select multiple contacts by keyword or tag for mass campaigns. Textedly shows your remaining credits, how many your message will use and even provides a link to purchase more if necessary.

When composing a message, it’s easy to add images, emojis or links right from the messaging window. We especially like that you can bold or italicize text, although special formatting reduces the amount of characters you can use in one text. You can also access pre-created templates to save time for common communications, but we were disappointed you can’t create new templates in the message window. Instead, you must navigate to the New Template section two clicks away.

AI Assistance

Another standout feature of Textedly’s messaging is its AI assistance. You can input a prompt and have Textedly generate a text in either a friendly or formal tone. Alternatively, you can ask AI to rewrite your own messages so they are always clear, grammatically correct and crafted in a way that is most likely to make an impact. 

You can also leverage AI to handle incoming messages. The tool will analyze any texts from your customers and generate automatic responses based on information in your system, such as office hours or product recommendations. While Textedly’s AI tools aren’t as robust as some competitors, we were impressed that these features are available with all plans, which means even small businesses on a budget can benefit.

Omnichannel Communications 

Omnichannel communications — the ability to communicate one-on-one and en masse with customers — is a popular feature of many customer relationship management (CRM) systems. We like how this functionality has been integrated into Textedly. 

Right from the centralized inbox, you can conduct live conversations with customers via text and other popular messaging platforms. This is an excellent way to boost customer engagement and increase sales with text messaging. Plus, you can set up desktop alerts on Chrome, Firefox and Safari to learn about new messages as soon as they arrive, so your clients don’t have to wait hours for a response.

The inbox integrates with WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Shopify and email. We appreciate that the message source is indicated next to each message and that customers receive their replies from the same channel they sent the message. For example, if a customer sends you a text, your reply comes as a text.

Textedly also allows for smooth team collaboration when handling customer communications. We really appreciate that you can transfer conversations to a more qualified colleague or someone in a different department. It’s also helpful that you can leave notes for colleagues about the best way to handle follow-up communications.

We like that Textedly allows you to enable your current landline for texting and lets you set up call forwarding for incoming calls to the toll-free or local number you use for messaging. However, it would be great if Textedly incorporated voice communications into the platform; with its current integrations, the system could also act as a basic CRM platform for smaller firms.

SMS Payments

While Textedly’s features aren’t as comprehensive as other platforms we reviewed, we were pleasantly surprised that they include text message payments with every plan except the two cheapest. This feature allows small businesses that don’t have the budget for the best credit card processing services to quickly and easily handle payments over SMS.

Once you send a request from the platform, the customer receives a link that leads to a simple yet secure payment platform through Stripe. You can set up recurring payments and schedule automated past-due reminders. Currently, the fee for text-to-pay transactions is 2.90 percent + $0.30.

Subscription Management 

We like how Textedly handles keyword-based subscriber grouping. You can manually add multiple tags to individual subscriber records or upload a CSV file. To save yourself work down the line, it’s best to tag each new contact as they subscribe. If you don’t, you’ll have to manually search your list and add them to each relevant record. This could take a long time and is far from ideal for complex segmentation.

It’s simple to find subscribers via tags, as Textedly’s filtering tool is quite powerful. However, you can’t save lists you’ve created through search. That’s an annoying limitation, but you can export the list from the platform if you want. The inability to save lists on the system means you must remember what you put in each search field and run the same search again to pinpoint the same subscriber group, making segmentation challenging. 

Google Review Management 

We were impressed that Textedly has online review management functionality. Customer reviews are great for online reputation management and can be a deciding factor in whether a client chooses your firm over a competitor.

Textedly allows you to send messages with links that allow customers to leave a review for you on Google, TripAdvisor, Facebook and Yelp. The process is manual — you send messages individually to clients — but the system is very easy to use.

Apps

You can add features to Textedly via the platform’s App Tools section. The company charges for many of these apps, while they’re free with other providers. Still, Textedly is substantially cheaper than most vendors, so add-on charges make sense. 

Textedly includes these built-in apps:

You can also use Zapier to link Textedly to Shopify and the following applications:

• Some of the best CRM software, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho and Pipedrive
• Customer service platforms, like Zendesk and Help Scout
• Some of the best email marketing services, including Mailchimp and Constant Contact
• Some of the best accounting software, including Xero and QuickBooks
• Social media sites, like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter)
• Workplace automation software, like Microsoft Teams and Slack

Textedly Pricing

Textedly offers 13 plans, all of which include free incoming messages. As with many texting platforms, you pay for the number of outgoing texts you send. Textedly offers these packages:

All plans include the following: 

• Free inbound messages
• Picture (MMS) messaging
• Unlimited contacts
• Chat support seven days per week
• One toll-free and one 10DLC number
• One user seat

All plans starting with Plus also receive premium support, Google Business Reviews functionality and the ability to accept SMS payments.

Note these pricing considerations: 

• Instead of providing a discount for paying annually, Textedly gives businesses with annual billing 20 percent more texts per month. For example, with the Bronze plan, you can send 1,200 monthly texts instead of 1,000 if you opt for yearly billing.
• There is no set up fee, but there is a monthly Telecom surcharge of $8.
• Some features do incur a one-time activation fee, such as the apps listed above and call forwarding ($99). We were disappointed that these prices are only shown in the Textedly platform and not listed on the website. 
• Textedly offers businesses a random short code for $1,000 a month or a vanity short code for $1,500 a month. There is a one-time setup fee of $1,000. 
• You can buy additional packs of 500 texts for $25 if you run out.
• Each extra keyword is $5 per month.
• Each additional seat costs $10 per month.
• Each additional number costs $15 per month.

Implementation and Onboarding

Registering for Textedly is quick and straightforward. We received a welcome email and text within 60 seconds of logging in. The help window on the bottom right of the platform provides assistance with the first steps to get Textedly up and running, including how to create a keyword and build a webform. 

If you want your employees to operate the platform, you can easily add new users. Go to your account settings, and select “Teammates” and then “New Teammate.” Each new teammate can access your account and share the central dashboard.

Textedly requires no software downloads. As with the other text message marketing platforms we evaluated, you can’t reconfigure the dashboard’s look or functionality, but this isn’t necessarily a hindrance.

Customer Support

Textedly’s support teams are available by phone, web chat, email form and text message between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. CST on weekdays and 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. CST on weekends. We appreciate that Textedly offers customers multiple ways to contact the company, including weekends.

Some online reviews of Textedly mention poor customer service, including unresolved issues and long wait times. However, when we reached out, we received a response from a rep within minutes. 

Limitations

Textedly lacks many of the nifty features its competitors offer, but if you add apps and integrations, it could rival the best solutions on the market. Unfortunately, Textedly doesn’t offer many native integrations and some business owners lack the technical know-how to integrate apps; they’d have to pay a developer or miss out on these capabilities. 

We appreciate that Textedly offers a scalable solution with many different plans based on text message credit; however some businesses might end up paying more to meet their needs. While you can upgrade to a higher service plan, the packages jump abruptly and could benefit from more intermediate options. For example, it’s hard to imagine needing 5,000 texts one month and 10,000 the next (going from Elite to Business) unless your number of subscribers shoots up or you want to text them more. Our review of SimpleTexting details a similar pricing issue. 

Furthermore, Textedly doesn’t offer robust segmentation features compared to other platforms. Many of the lower tier plans have a limited number of keywords and the maximum included amount is 50. Additional charges for keywords and seats could add up quickly over time. Plus, as detailed above, there are some limitations around Textedly’s tagging. 

We also found that compared with competitors’ offerings, Textedly’s marketing analytics capabilities are very limited; the platform provides minimal data on the number of texts sent and received. 

Methodology

We spent several weeks researching the top text message marketing services to determine the best solutions for various businesses. As part of our analysis, we looked at ease of use, features, pricing, customer support and integrations. To determine the best service for simple texting needs, we specifically examined essential functionality, the ability to run uncomplicated campaigns successfully, pricing and available message templates.

Bottom Line

We recommend Textedly for …

• Small businesses with simple texting needs that want to choose the marketing features they need.
• Companies that want an SMS platform that helps manage reviews and payments.
• Businesses looking for omnichannel messaging and AI-powered composition at affordable rates.

We don’t recommend Textedly for …

• Businesses that need a platform with a sophisticated API to incorporate a texting application into their software ecosystem.

Tom Anziano contributed to the reporting and writing in this article.