Business texting is rapidly becoming the go-to method for quick, efficient communication. Its high open rates, immediacy, and convenience make it an invaluable tool for businesses looking to capture subscriber attention, boost engagement, coordinate internally, and rapidly disseminate important information.
As business texting is adopted by more teams and organizations, it’s important to make sure you’re choosing the right platform for your needs. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll break down what makes a great business texting service, evaluate top platforms on the market, and help you find the perfect fit.
Jump right to:
- What makes a great business texting service?
- The 10 best business texting services for businesses
- How to choose the best business SMS service
- Frequently asked questions about business texting services
<h2 id="What">What makes a great business texting service?</h2>
Selecting a business texting service can be a daunting task – after all, there are numerous SMS platforms to choose from, each offering a variety of features that may or may not be useful for your business. To narrow down your choices, we’ll outline a few must-have components that any exceptional business texting service should offer. Let’s dive in.
Customer support
Regardless of your SMS use case, finding a provider that delivers exceptional customer support is crucial. Even the most advanced platforms packed full of impressive features can’t provide a quality experience without offering their users solid customer support.
An effective customer support team should provide quick troubleshooting to resolve any technical issues that arise, ensuring your SMS communications are delivered to contacts seamlessly. But good support goes beyond technical troubleshooting. An exceptional support team should provide guidance on SMS best practices, advice on how to improve overall engagement strategies, and offer robust education resources to users on ways to take full advantage of the features offered through their SMS platform.
Consider SMS providers that have 24/7, robust contact channels and well-developed knowledge bases or help centers.
Ease of use
A feature-packed platform isn’t useful to your business if it isn’t user-friendly. Your team should be able to implement and adopt your new SMS service without needing extensive training or a large amount of technical knowledge. A platform that’s easy to use will allow your business to be as effective as possible when communicating with customers.
Look for an SMS provider with robust features, advanced behind-the-scenes technology, an intuitive user interface, and simple navigation.
Security and compliance
As texting becomes a more popular form of business communication, compliance and privacy regulations are increasingly complex and important. It’s crucial to choose an SMS provider that understands industry requirements and makes regular updates to ensure your SMS service remains ethical and compliant.
And remember, you’ll be trusting your provider with not only your business’ data and information but also your customers’ data. This is especially crucial for businesses that work in fields with sensitive or private information, such as healthcare or finance. Ensuring your sensitive information remains safe and secure should be a top priority when selecting an SMS texting provider.
Look for platforms that use:
- Data encryption. End-to-end encryption methods should be used to protect messages during sending.
- Regulatory compliance. Your platform should adhere to relevant regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and TCPA to protect your business from violations.
- Two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA requires users to provide two forms of identification to access resources or data.
- Security teams. Providers that take security seriously will often have dedicated security teams to monitor and update security measures while providing incident response to quickly address potential security threats.
SMS feature set
A comprehensive set of features ensures that you’ll have the tools needed to reach your customers on diverse communication channels. Look for a platform that offers messaging breadth, such as two-way text messaging, mass or bulk messaging, true group messaging, and scheduling abilities.
Consider factors such as personalization capabilities at scale, the ability to schedule reminders or alerts ahead of time, or the ability to send MMS messages so your agents can share multi-media files.
Scalability
The SMS provider you choose now should be able to grow with your business. Selecting a platform that’s scalable is key to saving on costs and avoiding growing pains in the future while still remaining effective and useful for smaller teams.
Look for platforms that offer flexible plans that allow you to scale communications as needed without paying exorbitant fees or risk losing business because your SMS platform can’t keep up with growing demand.
Automations
Automation features are foundational to any great business texting service, enabling your business to save time, improve responsiveness, personalize and engage at scale, and provide round-the-clock, competitive support to customers.
Automations can be used to:
- Streamline workflows
- Provide 24/7 availability
- Answer customer FAQs
- Execute drip campaigns
- Capture data and insights
As customers begin to expect more from customer support teams, automation features can help bridge the gap between limited budgets and staffing while still providing customers with top-notch service.
Metrics
Comprehensive metrics and analytics features should be a core element of a reliable and effective platform. The information gained from analyzing the performance of your campaigns and the overall effectiveness of your campaign strategies is crucial to optimizing your SMS tactics.
A great business texting platform will offer tracking metrics that allow you to identify the types of messages that receive the most engagement, provide insights into your audience demographics, and track open, response, and click-through rates. This data is useful when it comes to optimizing campaigns and allocating budgets and resources toward strategies that yield the best results.
Customization
For seamless integration, data sharing, and maximizing workflow efficiency, select an SMS platform with robust application programming interface (API) options. APIs enable seamless integration with other software systems, such as CRMs, marketing tools, and customer service platforms, acting as a bridge between your existing software and your SMS platform.
API capabilities make it possible to customize and fully automate your business’ texting service, build tailored workflows unique to your business, and automatically personalize your texts by pulling information from existing data sources.
Integrations
Unlike APIs which generally require developers to set up and design, most SMS platforms provide native integrations, or pre-built connections, between their platform and other software.
Choosing a platform with native integrations is a simpler solution than utilizing APIs, especially for small businesses or organizations without developers or large amounts of technical expertise. Integrations are easy to set up, requiring little to no expertise, and offer quick, reliable ways to implement SMS into your already existing workflow and tech stack.
Ideally, your chosen SMS provider will have robust APIs and a host of native integrations that pair with popular software and tools.
Price
While you’re shopping for SMS solutions, try to evaluate whether the platform’s pricing is justified by the value it delivers. A reasonably priced plan will depend on your business’ budget, size, and needs, but there should be a balance between cost and essential features.
SMS platforms offer a variety of different pricing options. Some include:
- Pay-as-you-go pricing. Businesses are charged based on usage, such as the number of messages sent or received. This model is ideal for users with unpredictable or low-volume needs.
- Flat-rate plans. Flat-rate pricing is fixed, no matter the message volume. This model is beneficial for high-volume, predictable message needs.
- Subscriptions. Subscription plans usually operate on monthly or annual charges based on tiers. Each tier comes with a different price point, a set number of messages, users, or features. This method of payment is useful for businesses with consistent usage or aggressive scaling goals.
- Custom pricing. Large enterprises that send a high-volume of messages are sometimes offered custom pricing plans that include additional support or customization needs.
- Free or Freemium. Limited feature or usage plans are generally available for free for a certain period of time. Users typically have the option to upgrade at the end of the free trial or once all credits are used.
<h2 id="Ten">The 10 best business texting services</h2>
While all of the SMS services listed here are top-rated and receive great reviews from customers and users alike, they offer diverse features, pricing options, and use cases.
We’ll break each service down, highlighting its stand-out features, pros and cons, and cover pricing methods offered to help you choose the best platform for your business texting needs.
Textline: The best business texting platform for customer-facing teams
Best for: Customer-facing teams and security
Stand-out features
- Security and compliance
- True group texting
- HIPAA-compliant texting
- Omnichannel messaging (webchat, social media)
- Advanced workflow automation
- Scalability
- Customizable APIs
- Native integrations
- Advanced analytics
- Shared SMS inbox
Pros of Textline
Textline is a highly intuitive platform that balances ease of use with a wide breadth of features and powerful automation capabilities. This advanced platform was built with teams in mind and features innovative collaboration tools tailored to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.
Plus, unlike many other texting services, Textline offers true group messaging, not just bulk or mass texting. Group texting allows your team members to collaborate and share information within the same conversations, making it an ideal choice for operations and support teams.
Textline is the most secure business texting platform with unmatched security features, including multi-factor authentication, sensitive data redaction, and end-to-end encryption. Plus, Textline is HIPAA, TCPA, CCPA, and SOC 2 compliant, offering an excellent solution for healthcare providers and teams handling sensitive information.
To top it off, Textline’s customer support team offers rapid, thorough help to users, reducing downtime and ensuring users are taking full advantage of Textline’s advanced features. The combination of its advanced feature set, customization options, dedicated support offerings, and sleek interface makes Textline the best text messaging service for businesses.
Cons of Textline
Due to the robust nature of Textline’s platform and its emphasis on compliance and security, Textline isn’t the cheapest solution on the market. While Textline’s platform can be easy to use, taking full advantage of its advanced APIs and automation features may require some initial setup effort.
Try Textline’s platform today for free.
Pricing method: Monthly and annual subscription plans are available.
Textedly: Affordable SMS marketing platform for businesses
Best for: SMS marketing, reputation management, and text payments
Stand-out features
- Text-to-pay
- Mass texting
- Promotional messaging
- Online business review management
- Conversation triggers
- AI texting
- Bold and italic fonts
Pros of Textedly
Textedly is a powerful solution for SMS marketing. Textedly makes sending bulk messages to large contact lists seamless and affordable. For small businesses looking to reach large audience bases and share short, simple alerts, notifications, or promotional messages, Textedly is the perfect solution.
Plus, businesses can utilize Textedly’s secure SMS payments feature to request and collect payments from customers via text message, reducing late payments and ensuring steady cash flows.
On top of its text-to-pay, Textedly also offers customers a simple way to get more online reviews and manage them in one location to boost their reputation.
Cons of Textedly
Textedly offers a slightly more out-of-the-box solution than other platforms, which is ideal for getting your SMS service up and running quickly, but also means that Textedly’s platform is less customizable than other SMS services.
While the platform supports two-way messaging, its features are best suited for users looking to push out mass text blasts to multiple contacts at once.
Pricing method: Textedly offers subscription plans billed monthly or annually, starting at $26.
Twilio: A flexible business SMS service
Best for: Customized SMS services
Stand-out features:
- Programmable APIs
- Scalability
- Advanced automation workflows
- High customization
- Third-party integrations
- Reporting
Pros of Twilio
Twilio’s service differs from competitors in that it offers developers a programmable API to integrate text message capabilities into their existing software rather than a pre-built platform with a ready-made SMS inbox.
This can be beneficial for certain businesses that require exceptional flexibility and customization. Twilio’s API enables developers to fully tailor workflows to their business’ unique SMS needs while offering a seamlessly scalable solution as communication needs change.
Alongside its powerful API, Twilio offers no-code options and integrates easily with Zapier, allowing less technical users to access and utilize the API.
Cons of Twilio
For businesses looking for an out-of-the-box SMS solution, Twilio is not the best fit. While its API is a powerful tool for certain use cases and businesses with complex communication needs, it requires more technical knowledge and resources than other SMS platforms. Its features need to be built or configured, which means it’ll take longer to get your SMS service up and running.
Pricing Method: Twilio offers a pay-as-you-go pricing schedule.
SimpleTexting: A sleek platform built for ease of use
Best for: Simple text marketing campaigns.
Stand-out features:
- Text-based polls
- Push notifications
- Link-tracking
- Mass texting
- Built-in message templates
- Budget-friendly pricing
Pros of SimpleTexting
SimpleTexting stays true to its name, sticking to the SMS texting basics. It’s an easy-to-use solution for quickly executing simplistic marketing campaigns. It markets primarily to small businesses that don’t need complex workflows or campaigns.
As an added bonus, SimpleTexting enables businesses to share engagement-boosting features with contacts like surveys, voting, and competition polls from a small-business-friendly price point.
Cons of SimpleTexting
SimpleTexting does offer two-way texting to users, but their bread and butter is undoubtedly mass texting. It’s most user-friendly when you’re using it to share bulk texts with a contact list, but isn’t going to be the best choice for businesses with nuanced or complex messaging needs.
Pricing Method: SimpleTexting offers monthly and annual subscription plans.
TextMagic: Pay-as-you-go pricing
Best for: Flexible pricing
Stand-out features:
- Pay-as-you-go pricing
- Mass texting
- Two-way SMS chat
- Email to SMS
- Contact list segmentation
Pros of TextMagic
Paired with a user-friendly interface, TextMagic’s pay-as-you-go pricing makes it an ideal choice for businesses that want a simple SMS solution but don’t want to be locked into an ongoing contract.
TextMagic’s SMS service is geared toward businesses that have a predictable usage pattern or only need it for seasonal messaging. And with TextMagic’s lower initial investment amount, it’s a great option for startups or small businesses that don’t want to invest in a pricey contract.
Cons of TextMagic
TextMagic’s users love how easy to use the platform is, but cite a lack of integrations with various CRM platforms, making it more difficult to upload contact lists and transmit data between multiple software.
And while TextMagic’s pay-as-you-go rates might be ideal for low-volume users, it’s difficult to scale their platform to meet the needs of larger or rapidly growing businesses.
Pricing Method: TextMagic offers users pay-as-you-go pricing.
Mozeo: A white-glove business texting service
Best for: Large organizations with complex communication needs
Stand-out features:
- Mass texting
- Customized SMS solutions
- Exceptional support
- Robust API
- Delivery receipts
Pros of Mozeo
Mozeo’s product features a sleek, easy-to-navigate interface that specializes in bulk text message marketing. And while the robust platform speaks for itself, Mozeo’s shining star is its dedicated support team that goes above and beyond to ensure users get the most out of their SMS service.
For enterprise-level customers that require nuanced or customized SMS features, Mozeo’s team builds tailored development solutions and provides bespoke features to users.
Cons of Mozeo
Mozeo’s price point and emphasis on white-glove solutions make it less accessible and cost-effective for smaller businesses with simpler SMS needs.
Pricing Method: Mozeo offers pricing packages billed monthly or annually, plus custom pricing options for clients that require bespoke solutions.
Sakari: For affordable outbound messaging
Best for: Outbound SMS
Stand-out features:
- Scheduled messages
- Autoresponders
- Email to SMS
- URL shortening
- Opt in/out management
- AI assistant
Pros of Sakari
Sakari offers many of the features other SMS platforms do, including bulk messaging and integrations with popular CRMs like Hubspot and Salesforce.
What makes Sakari stand out, though, is its price point. With the exception of Twilio’s API platform, Sakari is one of the lowest price-per-message services, making it ideal for businesses looking to send a high volume of outbound messages at a more limited budget. It also recently launched an AI assistant to let customers create variations of campaigns quickly.
Cons of Sakari
While Sakari offers a competitive rate on outbound messaging, some customers wish they offered richer analytics and reporting, a wider range of native integrations, and more extensive API customization options. Sakari also only offers SMS as native messaging channel.
Pricing Method: Sakari offers monthly and annual subscription billing plans to customers.
EZTexting: For beginners with limited experience
Best for: An SMS marketing starter kit
Stand-out features:
- Mass texting
- Contests
- Coupon codes
- Contact management
Pros of EZTexting
EZTexting is an SMS platform built with beginners in mind. It provides users with a library of easy-to-use templates and contact management tools to help get your first SMS campaign off the ground.
Plus, EZTexting provides a comprehensive onboarding process and plenty of help documents to assist less technical users get accustomed to the platform.
Cons of EZTexting
EZTexting’s platform is primarily built for users with little to no SMS marketing experience and low-volume message needs. For larger businesses or users with more complex messaging needs, EZTexting’s pricing structure can become costly.
Further, while the platform is user-friendly, it lacks some of the more advanced features such as AI-powered automation or customizable APIs offered by other platforms, making it less scalable.
Pricing Method: EZTexting offers users subscription plans available on a monthly or annual basis.
SlickText: For SMS opt-ins
Best for: Growing your SMS contact list
Stand-out features:
- Subscriber growth tools
- Automated workflows
- Mass text messaging
- Text engagement tools
Pros of SlickText
SlickText helps businesses grow their subscriber base with a suite of list growth tools including text-to-join keywords, opt-in forms, website popups, QR codes, and email capture. It’s ideally suited for businesses that don’t yet have a robust contact list and are looking for ways to encourage subscriber growth.
SlickText also excels at helping users build keyword-triggered campaigns, making it easy to engage subscribers and streamlining agent workflows. To top it off, SlickText is known for providing customers with friendly, responsive customer support.
Cons of SlickText
SlickText lacks the more advanced features offered by other platforms and focuses heavily on SMS marketing features, making it less compatible for teams looking for an SMS provider than can also handle omnichannel messaging needs. Its pricing is also on the higher side, especially for small businesses.
Lastly, if your business is looking to manage your campaigns and SMS messages on the go, SlickText won’t be the best choice, as it does not yet offer a dedicated mobile app.
Pricing Method: SlickText offers users monthly subscription plans.
Podium: SMS for AI-centric sales teams
Best for: AI-powered sales SMS
Stand-out features:
- AI-built SMS marketing campaigns
- Personalization at scale
- Workflow automation
- Automated responses
Pros of Podium
Podium is a different kind of business texting solution, focusing heavily on AI solutions for marketing and sales. Podium’s wide array of AI offerings makes it an ideal SMS provider for sales and lead-driven teams, or smaller marketing teams with staffing limitations.
Podium’s automation features make it easy to execute and scale fully automated text campaigns, personalize messages, and provide customers with two-way, AI-driven conversations without adding more staff.
Cons of Podium
While Podium’s features lend themselves to small or medium-sized businesses, its pricepoint could be too high for small businesses with limited budgets. And for users that don’t need a large suite of flashy AI features, the platform can be overwhelming and unnecessarily complex for basic SMS needs.
Its advanced features are best suited for medium-sized businesses with larger budgets and the technical knowledge necessary to take full advantage of all that Podium has to offer.
Pricing method: Podium offers two monthly plans and a custom pricing option for more complex needs.
<h2 id="How">How to choose the best business SMS service</h2>
Now that you have a list of the 10 best SMS platforms out there, it’s time to choose the right one for your business. Before investing in a business texting service, it’s important to make sure your chosen platform has the features, support offerings, and pricing options to meet your needs.
The following points will help you determine which platform is the best fit for you.
Use case
How do you plan to use your SMS service? Customer support, sales, marketing, or internal collaboration? Choose a provider that specializes in your specific use case.
For example, Textline is a SMS platform that specializes in customer service and team collaboration. Its features are built to help teams collaborate and share information, making it ideal for businesses that are looking to use SMS for support and two-way messaging use cases.
Message volume
How many texts do you need to send? Are you sending texts to lists of 500 contacts or 500,000? Choose a provider that has the sending power, features, and functionality to meet your volume requirements.
Another key to messaging volume is does the SMS provider offer the phone number type you’d like to use? Short codes support large texting volume, while 10DLCs provide a more local feel.
Budget
How much can you spend on SMS messaging? Consider factors like number of users, volume of incoming and outgoing messages, and the consistency of your SMS needs.
For example, if you’ll be sending mass text messages to consistent numbers of contacts each month, choosing a provider that offers a standard subscription plan might be the best option for you. But if your business sends a varying number of messages, a pay-as-you-go plan might better suit your budget needs.
Team bandwidth
How many users will you need to add to your plan? How will they need to interact with each other? The number of users you have can affect pricing and function.
For example, if you’ll have a large support team working from one inbox, it’s important to choose a provider that offers collaboration and workflow features to keep your inbox organized and productive.
Integration needs
How many different platforms does your SMS service need to integrate with? Does your chosen SMS provider offer native integrations to your current CRM or software? If you have complex integration needs, choose a provider with robust APIs and integration options.
Core features
While it can be enticing to choose a platform with a wide variety of advanced features, you don’t want to pay for services that you won’t actually use. Determine the core features that would be the most impactful for your SMS service.
For example, if you want customers to be able to set appointments via text message with your agents, choose a provider that offers scheduling features. If you’re looking to alleviate workload for your customer support agents, it’s key to choose a platform with robust automation features.
<h2 id="Faq">Frequently asked questions about business texting services</h2>
Let’s cover a few commonly asked questions about SMS for businesses.
Why does my business need a texting platform?
Aside from the fact that SMS boasts a 98 percent open rate, it also offers businesses a hub for collaboration, engagement, troubleshooting, and conversation. Americans send over 6 billion text messages every day, making it one of the most used forms of communication. This makes it a crucial channel for businesses to embrace, especially those wanting to capture attention and provide exceptional customer service.
Business texting services allow your team members to reach customers on their preferred channels and makes your support and services teams more accessible to customers.
Plus, great business texting platforms offer a lot more than a simple way to send a text message. They’re versatile tools that streamline and automate workflows, allowing your team to focus on building better relationships and increasing customer satisfaction.
How does business texting differ from texting friends and family?
Business texting is different from personal texting in two primary ways. First, it requires a completely different tone and purpose. Business messages are typically concise, goal-oriented messages that require a professional, but friendly, tone of voice. They’re used to send things like appointment reminders, offer discounts and sales, or resolve issues.
Second, business texting requires opt-ins, compliance, and regulation. Businesses must adhere to regulations such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to ensure their text messages are sent legally. Unlike personal texting, business texting requires phone numbers to be registered, contacts have to opt in, and message content has to be regulated.
What are the most common use cases for business texting?
Business texting has a variety of different use cases, as it provides a flexible and dynamic way to connect with customers and internal teams. A few of the most common use cases include:
- Promotional texts (sales, deals, discounts)
- Customer support
- Internal communications
- Delivery and shipping notifications
- SMS alerts
- Appointment scheduling
- Feedback and survey collections
What are the benefits of using a business texting platform?
SMS texting services have a lot to offer your business. Business texting is an effective way to ensure the information you’re sharing gets seen by subscribers. It offers high open, response, and click-through rates without the hefty price tag of other advertising or promotional methods.
Business texting is also cost-effective compared to traditional marketing channels, offering a higher ROI for smaller businesses. Its broad reach and accessibility make it easier to connect with a more diverse audience and the immediacy of SMS delivery makes it ideal for time-sensitive communications.
For internal teams, business texting is an excellent way to collaborate on support tickets, send urgent dispatch instructions or alerts, and save employees time by leveraging automations and workflow solutions.
By investing in business texting, organizations can improve their overall communications, efficiency metrics, customer satisfaction scores, and increase engagement.
Ready to see the best business texting service for teams in action?
Textline’s business texting solution balances the benefits of outbound SMS with advanced internal team features, making it a powerful tool for customer-facing teams.
With an intuitive design and thoughtful workflow features like Textline’s Whispers, teams can collaborate by leaving private internal notes within conversations, increasing information sharing and reducing the amount of back-and-forth communication necessary to rapidly resolve customer issues.
Experience Textline’s transformative team solutions with a demo or sign up for a free trial today.
