Top Bulk Texting Software
- Our Pick: Textline
- Best for Text-to-Pay Messaging: Textedly
- Best for Pay-as-You-Go Texting: Textmagic
- Best for SMS Beginners: SlickText
- Best for Small Businesses: EZTexting
Staying Compliant
The U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was passed in 1991 to regulate telemarketing. Mass texting from businesses now falls under its rules. The TCPA spells out many responsibilities that businesses have when texting customers, but one of the most important ones to keep in mind is that recipients must give express consent to get texts from businesses. Sending texts to contacts that haven’t opted into your list could get you fined. This is why many SMS services have strict guidelines around their opt-in and opt-out functionalities.
How Much Do Mass Texting Services Cost?
Understanding how pricing works for texting services can be tricky. To start, most texting providers charge a monthly subscription fee to use their services. Based on the providers we researched, this fee is usually between $20 and $30 per month.
On top of that, you must consider carrier fees. Phone carriers charge a certain amount for every incoming and outgoing text. Some texting providers pass those costs directly onto their customers, while others lump those costs into the monthly plan. For instance, Texline charges $59.97 per month for the subscription plus $0.0154 per text for the carrier fee, while EZTexting charges a flat rate of $20 per month for both.
Another factor to consider with cost is if text sends are included in the monthly plan or if you must buy credits separately to pay for them. If you choose a provider with the former setup, you receive a certain number of texts per month. Once you reach that limit, the provider can either prevent you from sending more texts until a new month begins or charge you an additional fee for each text you send over the limit.
If a provider uses credits instead, you usually buy a pack of credits. Every text you send costs a certain number of credits. Once you run out of credits, you can buy another pack. The cost of these credit packs is separate from the cost of the monthly subscription (and the cost of any carrier fees, if applicable).
Here is how the pricing works for the providers in our review:
| Provider | Monthly Subscription Starting Price | Includes Carrier Fees? | Includes Sends? |
| Textline | $59.97 | ❌ | ❌ |
| Textedly | $0 | ❌ | 50 messages |
| SlickText | $29 | ❌ | 500 messages |
| EZTexting | $20 | ✅ | ❌ |
Note that we excluded Textmagic from this table because it has a unique pay-as-you-go model. You pay for each email you send instead of paying for a monthly subscription and/or a credit pack.
How To Choose the Right Mass Texting Service
We recently conducted a survey with decision-makers of small businesses who have used texting services. Here are the factors that these respondents found to be the most important to consider when choosing a provider.
MMS vs. SMS
There are two types of text messages: ones with just text that are under 160 characters long and ones with any combination of words, videos, images, links and GIFs that are of any length. The former is called short messaging service (SMS), and the latter is multimedia messaging service (MMS).
It’s important to know this difference because MMS messages cost more. The carrier fee is higher. And, if you choose a provider that charges by the credit, the number of credits per MMS is higher.
Two-Way Messaging
If you want to be able to carry out conversations with your customers over text, look for a provider with two-way messaging. The platform will have an inbox where you can see incoming messages and respond to them.
Integrations
Text messaging is one part of a marketing strategy. Therefore, you want your texting provider to be able to integrate with your other communication tools, such as your social media accounts and email marketing platform. If you have other business tools you use day to day, you can look for integrations to those as well.
Volume
Going into your search for a provider, you want to have a rough idea of how many texts you plan to send a month. That way, you can budget accordingly. If you choose a provider with a credit system, you will have to determine how many credit packs per month you will need to buy. On the other hand, if your provider includes a monthly send limit in each of its plans, you will need to choose a plan tier that meets or exceeds your estimate.
Textwords
Textwords, or short codes, are phrases that customers can send to your phone number to opt in or out of your marketing text messages. For example, a business might prompt customers to text “JOIN” to sign up for text messages and get 10% of their next order. Usually, every provider and plan has a limit on the number of textwords you can set up.
Surveys
If you want a quick way to get input from your customers, you can use texts to send them surveys. Many texting services have built-in survey capabilities. Recipients can answer the survey by opening the link.
Rollover
If you choose a service that operates on a monthly subscription model, make sure that your leftover texts roll over month to month. For example, if your plan allows you to send 1,000 texts in a month and you only send 700 texts in January, those extra 300 months should get added to next month’s total, making it 1,300 texts for February.
Some texting platforms don’t roll over unused texts. Those that do usually give you between one and three months to use them. In other words, you don’t get to build up a bank of extra texts that you can use indefinitely.
The Bottom Line
Mass texting services can help your business reach current and potential customers through a device that they almost always have close by — a phone. You can use texts to send purchase confirmations, appointment reminders, discount codes and more.
Textline is our top pick for mass texting because of its extensive capabilities and intuitive interface. Businesses that are new to SMS marketing will find SlickText and EZTexting easy to use, while companies that want two-way text communication should look into Textedly and Textmagic.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mass Texting Services
We selected Textline as the best app for mass texting because its platform remains easy to use even with its extensive set of features. That being said, the best app for you may be another provider depending on your industry, budget and other factors.
Because phone carriers charge for texts, mass texting services typically do not offer free plans. However, many have free trials that you can use to compare providers to one another.
You can send 100 text messages at once with a mass texting service. You can use one of these apps to draft a text and send it to all of your contacts at the same time.
Mass texting is not illegal, but it is highly regulated. The U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires businesses to meet certain criteria to stay compliant. Texting services are aware of these rules, so they can help you stay compliant. However, it’s still a good idea to be familiar with the rules yourself.
A drip campaign is an automated marketing campaign that creates multiple touchpoints with customers over time. For example, if you run a hair salon, you could use text message software to schedule automated appointment reminders. Then, after the appointments, you could follow up with a link to a survey to review the service.
Methodology
We at the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours testing almost 35 marketing software solutions, including Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Semrush and Google Analytics. These providers help with some or all of the following marketing disciplines:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Text/short message service (SMS)
- Email marketing
We conducted a survey in 2024 of 200 professionals who were currently using marketing software or had marketing HR software within the past year. We analyzed the results of this survey to determine the following rating criteria:
- User Experience (7%)
- Pricing (8%)
- Features (65%)
- Customer Support (5%)
- Reputation and Reviews (15%)
Visit the full marketing methodology page for more details on our rating system.
If you have feedback or questions about this article, please email the MarketWatch Guides team at editors@marketwatchguides.