Top SMS Marketing Tools on the Market in 2023

SlickText delivers a full-featured program that helps businesses stay in touch with existing customers, grow brand awareness, and attract new clients. This software lets users interact with their clientele in meaningful ways by allowing two-way texting, loyalty rewards, and give-away competitions. With a starting price of just $29 a month, SlickText is an affordable solution that even lets you use up leftover credits the following month.

Contact Acquisition

Growing your subscriber database is easy with a professional-level business text messaging software like SlickText. In addition to the standard option – texting a keyword to a short code number – this software provides you with web opt-in forms you can add to your website. This is very convenient for eCommerce retailers who don’t have a physical presence. They have no way of handing out flyers or interacting with customers face-to-face, so they appreciate the ability to create a simple webform for their online store.

SlickText web forms are great for gathering customer data. Ask for subscribers’ email addresses, names, and dates of birth through this text message program and use it to build stronger relationships with your clients. After all, everyone loves a “happy birthday” message and a discount.

Automation Features

Automation is at the heart of mobile text marketing. The idea is to pre-tailor the messages that will be sent in a timely manner to a select group of people who have opted in to such communication. Slick Text offers six automation features, for both simple autoresponders and people who join your list; and scheduled texts to advanced drip marketing campaigns.

Users have a lot of customization options to choose from when creating drip campaigns with the SlickText automated text service provider. Campaigns range from a few to a dozen texts long, and messages can be sent out within minutes or even years. Users can set up their drip campaigns to target only a portion of their subscriber database. There’s no reason to spam everybody when you can send sensible messages only to the people who purchased something or shared certain information with you. 

As a great solution for online sellers, SlickText offers automated abandoned cart messages. Using an API, you can connect your eCommerce website with this auto texting software which will then encourage shoppers to revisit their carts and finalize their purchase. Automated birthday deals and recurring text messages complete SlickText’s array of automation features. 

Customer Engagement

By using the “text to vote” feature you can easily communicate with your customers, collect their feedback, and learn about their preferences. SlickText allows three types of answers – numeric response, multiple-choice, and open-ended. You create the questions, determine their number, and propose the answers. With the advanced analytical data that you’ll capture with these surveys, you’ll be able to create more granular segmentation lists for future drip campaigns. Or you can use the data to come up with new products your customers will love.

Other great customer engagement features offered by this texting platform include “text to win,” where people compete for a prize your business is giving away, mobile coupons, and loyalty rewards. With SlickText, you can even enjoy two-way communication. If you enable the one-on-one text functionality, your customers will be able to reply to your automated messages and engage even further with your business. Best of all, incoming messages are free.

Analytics and Reporting

Not only does SlickText collect and analyze heaps of customer data, it also presents it in an easy-to-understand, user-friendly way. If you’re an eCommerce retailer looking to open a physical store but aren’t sure where, SlickText is the best text marketing platform for your needs. Simply run a text-to-vote survey and find out where respondents are located geographically.

The survey results will also include the number of people who participated, how many of them completed it, how long it took them to complete it, the completion rate, and even where exactly in the survey people lost interest. Another important upside of the SlickText reporting feature is that it easily shares data with marketing and CRM programs.

Integrations

Thanks to the Zapier integration, you can connect SlickText with over 1,100 popular software programs. If you have a software of your own, you can use the RESTful API to enable free flow of information between it and SlickText.

Those who want to exchange data collected through marketing text messages and marketing emails can do so with MailChimp, Constant Contact, and ActiveCampaign integrations. And if you’re really satisfied with a text and you’d like to share it on Facebook, posting it is one click away, straight from this text marketing app.

On top of all these useful integrations, SlickText hits another sweet spot for online merchants. It integrates with your Shopify account, letting you capture new subscribers at checkout.

Customer Support

SlickText reviews rarely fail to mention the company’s outstanding support team. You can reach them via email or phone during standard working hours and they’ll go out of their way to resolve your issue. And if you prefer chatting, you can reach out to an agent straight from your account. The software’s abundance of learning resources really sets SlickText apart from similar SMS marketing services. It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner or a seasoned pro, you’ll find valuable materials in their blog and guide sections.

Pricing

SlickText pricing structure consists of five tiers which range from $0 to $139 a month. You’ll be able to save an unlimited number of contacts, use one keyword, and send 50 texts a month if you choose to use SlickText free of charge. This Freebie plan is a substitute for the free trial.

The Basic plan is pretty affordable at $29 a month. With it, you can send 500 texts and use two keywords. MMS and chat support become available on this plan. For a monthly fee of $49, you unlock the Set Up plan. In addition to 1,000 messages and four keywords, you also receive one-on-one setup support from a SlickText representative. 

The Lil Bro and the Big Bro plans don’t introduce new features; they deliver a higher number of messages. The former costs $79 a month for 2,000 texts and six keywords whereas the latter costs $139 a month for 3,600 texts and eight keywords. 

SlickText Bottom Line

If you are looking for a reliable, user-friendly, and powerful service that you can upgrade or downgrade at any time, SlickText might be just the right match. Its robust features and helpful resources can be of use to business owners from any industry, but its Shopify integration and abandoned chart automated texts make it an extremely good fit for eCommerce retailers. 

Tatango offers a sophisticated and customizable bulk texting solution that lets users send three types of messages – SMS (short message service), MMS (media message service), and RCS (rich communication service). A relatively new messaging technology, RCS includes suggested replies and actions, custom branding, and dynamic rich media that can do wonders for customer engagement.

Another area where Tatango exceeds other TXT messaging services is hyper-targeting. Those looking for a marketing campaign tool they can tweak that also gives them the option of audience segmentation should definitely take Tatango under consideration.

Contact Acquisition

Tatango only offers two basic ways to get contacts on your list. You can either upload an existing list to the system, or you can get new subscribers by encouraging them to text your keyword to a shortcode.

However, once the contacts are in your database, Tatango lets you add more than just a contact’s phone number. 

Each subscriber has their own profile where you can save their name, surname, email, birthday, gender, wireless carrier, subscription data and method, their favorite store, and ZIP code. With this additional information, you can create super-targeted marketing campaigns that will bring actual value to each subscriber without burdening them with irrelevant information. You can look up the entire conversation history with a subscriber in their profile or export it to other marketing programs.

Automation Features

Tatango is the best SMS marketing platform for business owners who want to plan their mobile SMS marketing campaigns in advance. With Tatango you can create mobile workflows of different complexity and length. You choose whether you’ll make a single-stage monthly promotion sent to every contact, or send out weekly messages only to subscribers who replied the previous week.

Creating a drip campaign takes only minutes thanks to the straightforward interface, and it takes care of your text message marketing efforts for the whole month. Of course, you can take a more hands-on approach and experiment with your automation workflows – Tatango’s term for drip campaigns. Since this text message software provides data-rich subscriber profiles, you can design more automated workflows that go out only to small groups of subscribers that share certain traits and behavior.

Customer Engagement

With the option of sending SMS, MMS, and RCS messages to a carefully selected group of contacts, Tatango represents a really powerful and versatile tool for engaging with customers. You can send mobile coupons, loyalty cards, event invites, and notifications. 

Unlike other companies from our list, which only support SMS and MMS messages, Tatango also lets you send RCS messages. These media messages are great for raising brand awareness, but also for encouraging consumers to take action by visiting your store or voting for a product.

Analytics and Reporting

Tatango analytics and reporting features dive deep into your data to present you with important insights about both your individual subscribers and entire campaigns. This software informs you of open rates, link click-through rates, and bounced text rates for every message you send. You also see which mobile wireless carriers your contacts use and how many people unsubscribed after receiving a certain text. All the information you gathered by Tatango is exportable so you can reuse it in other marketing apps.

Integrations

Connecting Tatango with other software solutions is easy. It offers out-of-the-box integrations for a number of leading marketing apps like Mail Chimp, iContacts, Constant Contact, and Campaigner. Zapier integration connects this marketing software with hundreds of other programs. There’s even an API so that you or your developer team can bridge the gap between Tatango and other programs not covered by Zapier.

Customer Support

No other program from our list compares to Tatango when it comes to video lessons. With more than 450 short explainer videos on their website and YouTube channel, Tatango provides more information than any other competitor. These videos cover topics like the basics of SMS marketing, emerging trends, and software use advice.

You can reach customer care representatives via phone, email, and live chat during weekdays from 7 AM to 7 PM EST. These options and long working hours exceed the industry standard.

For no extra charge, the Tatango support team holds all the training sessions you and your team need. It also assists you with setting up your first campaigns and provides you with a Slack channel. While chatting with an agent, we were told that clients can even reach out to their account manager on the weekends via phone in the event of an emergency.

Pricing

Tatango provides a pay-as-you-go mass text messaging service. This means the company doesn’t have pricing tiers and monthly fees. Each month you’ll be charged only for the messages you end up spending. One 160-character SMS costs $0.01 while the price per 5,000-character MMS is $0.02. There’s also the $500 fee for the monthly lease of a short code. There are no contracts or additional fees to worry about.

Tatango Bottom Line

Business owners who want to avoid excessive fees for messages that they might not end up sending love the Tatango pricing method. If you are also unsure of how intensive your text messaging marketing campaigns are going to be, this text blast software is a great fit. What’s more, its set of features and support team are remarkable. The only downside is the lack of free trial.

Everybody needs a good CRM to communicate with their customers about their product or service, and this is where EngageBay excels. It offers immeasurable help with creating online marketing campaigns, engaging your customers, generating new ones, and creating the best campaign. With text messages being one of the most effective ways to bring in customers, this powerful tool is a much-appreciated feature, especially since it could be entirely free for you.

Contact Acquisition

Contact acquisition is something EngageBay excels at. It comes with a powerful landing page builder, through which you can create drop-dead gorgeous landing pages that will undoubtedly get you all the contact information you need without any coding skills required.

On these landing pages, you can create effective forms that will help you add new numbers to your text list. You can also effortlessly upload an existing “phone book.” From there, you can use this information to start communicating with your customers with the help of this software.

Automation Features

You won’t miss out on any automation features with EngageBay, as it offers both behavior-based automation and the opportunity to include SMS marketing in your automated workflows. 

You can use these to send text messages based on what your customers do on your website, as well as to wish them a happy birthday. After you’ve effortlessly set up trigger points – such as cart abandonment, failed payments, or even promotions – you don’t have to think about it anymore; EngageBay will handle the rest. 

EngageBay allows you to create specific lists of contacts based on the parameters of your choice. If you want to target a particular group with your text message campaign, this software will allow you to set it up per list. You can further personalize the messages to your recipients by adding special features like their name, appealing deals, or Facebook promotions, which helps tremendously if you’re texting in bulk.

Customer Engagement

Apart from customizing the content of these text messages for each user or list, EngageBay’s text messaging leaves a lot to be desired in terms of customizations and additional features. Considering that text messaging is not the primary purpose of EngageBay, it’s no wonder that it lacks many customer engagement features, especially compared to the absolute best text message marketing software available.

However, where it lacks customization, it offers several different types of campaign to its clients. Suppose you’d like to include videos, GIFs, and other types of content that some other providers offer. In that case, you could take advantage of EngageBay’s email marketing or video marketing templates. 

Analytics and Reporting

Where EngageBay lacks customization options, it has an incredibly powerful tracking and analytics tool to help you get the most out of every campaign, including SMS marketing. To improve your strategy’s weak points, being able to pinpoint them is crucial, which is why it’s safe to say that EngageBay is an excellent SMS marketing software solution if you value feedback that will help you improve your campaign.

Integrations

EngageBay is home to many integrations, allowing you to get the most out of this tool in every way. That’s also true for its SMS marketing capabilities. If we’re talking about SMS-related integrations, it integrates with 10 different SMS providers’ APIs, including Twilio, JustCall, and Plivo, among many others. 

On the other hand, EngageBay as a CRM offers several valuable integrations. This includes Zapier, which allows further integration with more than 1,000 programs, as well as Xero and SendGrid, among many others. You can integrate whichever additional tool you need and start those campaigns without leaving your dashboard, making EngageBay one of the best SMS marketing providers you could use.

Customer Support

When it comes to EngageBay, customer support is always just a click away. The platform offers live chat both on its site and within the dashboard, making contacting the support team as easy as can be. You can also make contact via phone or email in case you need any further assistance. 

EngageBay also features a very thorough support page on its website. You’ll be able to find detailed videos that explain every aspect of the platform and read through many articles and guides to find the help you need. EngageBay also promises that webinars will be available in the future – just another way to learn more about this great texting software for small business. 

Pricing

When it comes to EngageBay’s pricing, the good news is that all of its tools are entirely free – as long as you stay under 1,000 contacts and 1,000 branded emails. Considering that sending texts as a part of your campaign is a feature of this CRM, they are also included within the free plan, along with the landing page builder, help chat, email marketing, and other tools.

However, if you have more than 1,000 contacts, you’ll still get an excellent deal, making this the best SMS marketing for small business tool in terms of pricing. The Basic plan costs $8.99 per month for 15,000 contacts, and you can also get unlimited contacts with the Pro plan, which costs $47.99 per user monthly. These prices are valid if you sign up for two years in advance. If you decide to go with month-by-month payments without committing for one or two years, EngageBay’s Basic plan will cost you $47.99 per user.

EngageBay Bottom Line

EngageBay is an excellent all-round solution for building and nurturing relationships with your customers. SMS marketing is just one of the numerous tools it offers, so its customization options are slightly limited. However, other notable aspects of the CRM still apply, such as innumerable integrations and powerful analytics tools. Even if it weren’t one of the best text marketing services out there, which it is, its combination of solutions is incredibly beneficial for small businesses.

Among the texting platforms we reviewed, TXT180 stands out for its flexible billing features and affordable keywords. Available on desktop and mobile, TXT180 offers creative ways of attracting new opt-ins, all the standard automation features as well as a communication platform for keeping in touch with your customers.

Contact Acquisition

TXT180 outperforms the competition when it comes to contact acquisition options. It goes beyond the tried and tested method of enabling customers to opt-in by sending keywords to your shortcode. It also helps you get the word out about your business’s keywords and shortcode by offering a flyer builder. This tool is both simple to use and highly effective in raising the number of your subscribers. Once you create a flyer, you can put it up in your restaurant, hand it out to customers, send it via direct mail, or share it on social media.

Additional options for expanding your list of contacts include a website widget and a QR code generator. If you have a website, you can make a sign-up form in TXT180 and then post it on your website. And if you use business cards, you can print the QR code that will lead people to a page where they can leave their contact info.

Automation Features

With TXT180 you can greet new subscribers with automated responses. Instead of relying on a basic texting message, you can greet them with a promotion or a mobile coupon. Since these welcome bonuses tend to be very attractive, some customers might be tempted to unsubscribe and subscribe again so they can reap double rewards. However, TXT180 will recognize these kinds of attempts and send “welcome back” replies to these subscribers. 

Like other companies from our list, TXT180 lets users write messages in advance, as well as select the time that individual messages will go out. What’s more, the company gives you the option to create multiple messages to be sent out over a period of time to some or all of your contacts. If you notice that certain drip campaigns are bringing you great results, you can save those message templates for later. 

Customer Engagement

When it comes to features that promote customer engagement, TXT180 is on par with other companies from our best provider list. With the two-way texting feature enabled, you can use TXT180 as a business text messaging app, which is a great way to save on live chat apps. 

Hosting sweepstakes, a popular way to expand your list of subscribers, is available to TXT180 users too. The system randomly selects the winners and informs them of their good luck with a message you’ve previously curated. And when you need to hear your customers’ thoughts on something, you can create a text-to-vote campaign with the help of the TXT180 support staff.

This provider has a couple of less commonly seen engagement features up its sleeve. You’ll appreciate the age verification functionality if you provide age-restricted products like alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. And if you want to go with a less pushy text marketing approach, you have the option of creating keywords that consumers can use to get one-time information about your brand. If you deliver value in that one message, they might opt-in to your texting list.

Analytics and Reporting

We were disappointed to discover that this otherwise feature-rich service lacks reporting features.

Integrations

TXT180 integrates with Zapier which, in turn, connects it with more than 1,100 apps. Through Zapier, TXT180 shares data with popular mail marketing platforms, eCommerce websites, and team communication apps.

Customer Support

Users who prefer to speak to a representative when they encounter an issue are raving about the professionalism and approachability of the TXT180 support team. Customer representatives are available via phone and email Monday through Thursday from 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM MST, and Fridays from 8 AM to 2 PM MST. 

Pricing

All TXT180 pricing plans deliver one free keyword, and additional keywords can be purchased at a very low price. If you want to connect a keyword to the standard shortcode (77948) it will cost you $10 to set it up and $2 each month. Adding a new keyword to a custom shortcode (21000) is a little pricier but still affordable with a $20 setup fee and $7 monthly charge.

The nine pricing tiers of TXT180 range between $19.95 a month for 500 credits and $625 a month for 50,000 credits. Like other text message marketing companies, with TXT180, each SMS counts as one credit while an MMS counts as three credits.

The good thing about this service is that you can buy additional credits at any point during the month if you happen to run out. Another advantage TXT180 has over its competitors is that it has no setup fees (except for additional keywords), cancelation fees or contracts. You’ll be charged month-to-month for the texts you send out, while the incoming messages from your customers won’t cost you anything.

TXT180 Bottom Line

Those who want to avoid getting tied up in long contracts should definitely give TXT180 a go. This provider gives users the flexibility of upgrading their plan at any time, as well as a variety of features for promoting their businesses via text message. The only true inconvenience here is the lack of reporting features. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and see if TXT180 is a good fit for your business.

Trumpia shifts mobile marketing into high gear. This enterprise-level solution combines mass texting service, email and social media marketing to provide a central dashboard for your digital advertising efforts. This professional-grade software is the only one from our list that can be used to reach international audiences from virtually any country in the world. 

Used by marketing and HR staff alike, Trumpia is a great tool for in-house communication too. Catering to the needs of large companies with multiple locations, it provides different admin permissions and restrictions. Keep in mind, though, that the price of this software reflects its comprehensiveness.

Contact Acquisition

All SMS marketing platforms that we reviewed offer a few ways to feed the system with subscriber data. You can upload contacts from previously used marketing software, let customers opt-in by texting a keyword or shortcode, or post opt-in forms on social media.

Trumpia meets the industry standard and raises the bar. When you create an online sign-up form you can export it to your Facebook and Twitter accounts with the click of a button, tripling your reach. 

Another way consumers can opt-in for your texting services is by scanning a QR code. Once your clients subscribe to your marketing list, you can ask them for personal information and preferences. This will help you target them with relevant promotions and deals in the future.

On the other hand, enterprise clients that use Trumpia for internal communication can instruct their employees to download the Trumpia mobile app. Available on iOS and Android devices, the mobile app is a great way of getting important information across.

Automation Features

Like other text marketing apps Trumpia offers automated replies, drip campaigns, and appointment reminders. However, thanks to advanced contact segmentation functionality, it has taken online texting automation to the next level. The key to not spamming your subscribers is collecting data about their preferences and behavior so that you can offer relevant content. And the Trumpia software enables this, while the Trumpia support staff helps you set these features up.

With the smart filters feature you can segment your subscribers based on how they opted in, their age, or location. Dynamic targeting is another amazingly useful feature that other SMS platforms are lacking. Trumpia moves contacts into different subcategories based on how contacts are responding to your previous messages. This enables you to send loyalty rewards only to the customers who are truly loyal. Or to send “welcome to our marketing subscribers list” texts and emails only to the people who have joined recently.

Since Trumpia is a platform that combines text and email marketing, its drip campaigns can be set up to send texts from a computer as well as emails and voice messages.

Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is yet another area where Trumpia exceeds expectations. This Text messages service is a fantastic way to promote events since consumers rarely leave their homes without their phones. And with two-way texting, you can poll your invitees about whether they’re coming or not, or which appetizers they’d like to be served. The two-way texting feature can be paired with a bot in order to provide your opt-ins with answers to frequently asked questions.

The resources section of the Trumpia website is full of real-life examples of how to use the polling, couponing, loyalty rewards, video, image, and voice messages to engage with your audience in the most meaningful ways. 

This SMS marketing software that also lets you reach out to your contacts via email runs your every email through a spam filter. By flagging any part of an email that might land it in contacts’ junk folder, Trumpia gives you a chance to alter it before sending it. This maximizes your open rates and the success of your campaigns.

Analytics and Reporting

SMS marketing tools that don’t provide comprehensive analytics are robbing its users of the chance to improve their marketing strategies. Luckily, Trumpia doesn’t fall into this category. With the Trumpia reporting feature, you can generate dozens of reports at any given moment. These include logs of subscribers who received a message and the ones who did not; the total number of successfully and unsuccessfully sent messages; voting results; and demographic information.

But perhaps the most useful feature, at least from a financial point of view, is seeing how many credits each message blast costs you. Users are presented with this info both before and after sending them.

Integrations

Like other popular text softwares, Trumpia offers a Zapier integration that connects it with a variety of other programs. In addition to the Zapier integration, Trumpia also provides a SalesForce integration that automatically imports leads captured through keywords into SalesForce. Sales teams that connect these two applications can enable their business numbers for texting and engage in multiple conversations using a web-based inbox. Other benefits of Trumpia text services, like message templates, scheduling, and triggered campaigns are also enabled.

Customer Support

With a platform as comprehensive as this one, users are bound to have some questions. Judging by Trumpia reviews, the US-based support team is always ready to help. You can call, text or email the support staff 365 days a year. They are available weekdays from 6 AM to 6 PM PT, and weekends from 8 AM to 4 PM.

When you first start using Trumpia you’ll receive extensive onboarding support. An agent will help you set up your system, brainstorm the best communication strategy for your business, and share successful practices from other companies. What’s more, a compliance agent will walk you through text marketing do’s and don’ts. An outstanding customer experience stems from the amount and quality of free resources Trumpia offers too. If you are short on ideas, you can consult dozens of case studies, read through pages of white papers, and watch hours of video guides.

Pricing

The Trumpia pricing structure consists of two plans that meet the needs of SMBs and three enterprise plans. The most affordable plan for this email and SMS marketing software starts at $195 per month. At first glance, this might seem quite expensive compared to Textedly and SlickText. But when you examine the software more carefully, you’ll see that Trumpia’s smallest plan delivers more than these two competitors’ biggest plans. The Standard plan includes one admin account, five keywords, 5,000 SMS credits, and 12,000 emails.

The company’s most popular plan is called the Professional plan, and it costs $495. Its three admin accounts can satisfy the requirements of a small company on the rise. It delivers ten keywords, 15,000 SMS credits, and 32,000 emails. In addition to the core features, Professional plan users also benefit from enterprise functionalities like roll-specific interface and credit allocation.

If this text messaging service for small business doesn’t quite cut it for your large enterprise, you have three larger plans to choose from. They range from $995 a month to $3,955 a month, delivering priority support, customized campaign consulting, and unlimited keywords.

Though some might argue that these prices are too high, they correspond to the quality of the service provided. The only downside of Trumpia’s pricing structure is that it obliges users to sign one-year contracts.

Trumpia Bottom Line

Merging social media, email, and text marketing platforms into one, Trumpia provides a wholesome solution for the digital marketing department. And thanks to its on-point targeting and automation features, you can deliver relevant content to each subscriber based on their interactions with your brand. Excellent customer service and top-of-the-line reporting features justify the relatively high price of Trumpia’s services.