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.

Textedly is a user-friendly platform that can help you build your subscriber list. Source: Textedly

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.

The site has a Help Center, but it’s hard to find because it’s linked with the term “SMS Marketing Help Center” in its footer. This text is a bit generic; users might respond better to something like “How to use Textedly.”

At 36 pages, Textedly’s knowledge base is the sparsest of all the systems we reviewed. For example, Podium’s knowledge base is 100 pages, SimpleTexting’s is 190 and ProTexting’s is 132. That said, Textedly’s content is clearly written and thoroughly explains how to perform various tasks. There is also a Best Practices blog post and several helpful YouTube videos that, strangely, aren’t linked to the control panel.

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.

Textedly’s dashboard features key information in colored boxes and a chart showing various metrics. Source: Textedly

Textedly 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.

Keywords and Templates

Like most text message marketing services, Textedly supports keywords. You can develop keywords that reflect your offerings (like “manicure,” if your business is a nail salon) and encourage subscribers to use them when they opt in to receive texts. We liked that it took us just 60 seconds to set up a new keyword. Editing keywords is also straightforward.

You can draft a welcome message or use a template. However, we found Textedly’s template tool a bit frustrating. You can’t write something new and save it as a template for future use. Instead, you must navigate to the New Template section two clicks away. There are 65 templates, but they’re not linked to this part of the dashboard. Despite this inconvenience, we were impressed by how fast and easy the keyword system was to use, although very few keywords are included with Textedly’s lower plans.

We like how you can set up conversation triggers to configure the system to respond to common questions. The system scans inbound text messages for keywords and specific phrases you highlight and sends appropriate responses automatically. 

However, Textedly uses rules-based chatbot technology; it’s not driven by artificial intelligence (AI), so it has limitations. 

Textedly allows you to set up automatic responses to incoming texts based on keywords. Source: Textedly

Messages and Campaigns

We like that Textedly makes it easy to send messages and set up campaigns. When you select “Messages,” you’ll see a list of all messages and campaigns. Select “New message” at the top of the screen to create a new message or campaign. 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 add new subscribers in this area.

To send a campaign, select the boxes next to the keyword subscribers you want to target and choose whether to send the campaign immediately or later. Unfortunately, unlike other solutions we reviewed, Textedly doesn’t allow you to turn a new campaign into a recurring one in this section; you must go elsewhere on the platform for that.

We like that you can conduct live text conversations with customers through Textedly. This is an excellent way to boost customer engagement and ultimately increase sales via text messaging. From the Messages screen, select “Inbox” to see and respond to messages. You can set up desktop alerts on Chrome, Firefox and Safari to learn about new messages as soon as they arrive. This type of personalized communication is a proven way to earn customers and keep them coming back.

Easily access and edit ongoing and previous campaigns from the Messages tab. Source: Textedly

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.

Textedly features an Outlook-style inbox where you can view and respond to texts, WhatsApp and Messenger messages, and messages from the platform’s chatbot. The message source is indicated next to each message. 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.

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 you can convert your existing landline number to receive text messages so customers don’t have to select from a bunch of numbers to communicate with you. Plus, you can forward incoming calls from the toll-free or local number you use to send and receive texts.

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.

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.

Analytics

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. You can examine your overall activity weekly or monthly, or by keyword. 

However, we like that you can track conversion rates from texts that include a web link. You can use the intuitive Google Campaign URL Builder to track which campaigns generate the most visits and sales. 

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
• Workplace automation software, like Microsoft Teams and Slack

Textedly’s integrations are limited, but you can open the door to many more through Zapier. Source: Textedly

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 text 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 are no setup fees, but there is a monthly account fee of $8.
• You can buy additional texts for 5.5 cents each if you run out.
• Each extra keyword is $5 per month (plus a $6 telecom surcharge).
• Each additional seat costs $10 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. That was quickly followed by a helpful email advising us what a keyword is and why we should set one up immediately.

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.

Textedly does not have a dedicated mobile app, but you can use the system on the go via the platform’s website. Source: Textedly

Customer Support

Textedly’s support teams are available by phone, web chat, email form and text message between 9 a.m. and midnight ET on weekdays and 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET on weekends. The company recently extended its customer service across seven days to provide better coverage for customers across all U.S. time zones. The weekend availability is also a plus.

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. However, many business owners lack the technical know-how to integrate apps; they’d have to pay a developer or miss out on these capabilities.

Textedly charges 5.5 cents for each additional monthly text if you exceed your allotment, which is far more than the equivalent cost of inclusive minutes. Additional charges for keywords and seats could also add up quickly over time. 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 email them more. Our review of SimpleTexting details a similar pricing issue. 

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.
• Companies that want to bolster their Google Reviews presence.
• Large businesses with multiple branches or departments, where each branch or department wants to send promotional messages to its own customers.

We don’t recommend Textedly for …

• Companies that want maximum functionality right out of the box.
• Businesses that need a platform with a sophisticated API to incorporate a texting application into their software ecosystem.