Bulk text message services enable businesses to use one of the most innovative customer engagement tools. Text message marketing allows even small businesses to stay current and competitive.
SMS marketing works. According to research, 75% of consumers want to receive promotional texts. Text messages are opened 98 percent of the time versus 20% for emails, and links in text messages are clicked 19 percent versus 2% in emails.
Trumpia
Over 2,000 customers, including Costco, GM, Baltimore Ravens, and Goodwill, have used Trumpia since its inception in 2006. We chose it for scalability because it helps small businesses grow with robust automation, targeting, and enterprise-grade messaging.
Trumpia includes drip campaigns, scheduled reminders, contact importing, mobile keywords, and detailed reporting. A shuffle responder for sending random fun messages is also available.
Trumpia also integrates with Salesforce and thousands of other apps via Zapier. A developer’s choice of Trumpia’s APIs and pre-programmed tools.
Trumpia offers 13 plans ranging from $36 to $3,196 depending on message and email count. The company’s most popular plans for small-to-medium-sized businesses lack automations, list customizations, and user controls.
EZ Texting
EZ Texting was founded in 2006 and now has over 165,000 users including Domino’s and Viking. For businesses looking for new ways to engage customers, it offers a wide range of text message marketing tools.
EZ Texting makes it easy for businesses to market to customers via text message. The software generates a sharable short code based on a keyword.
With DEALZ as a keyword, EZ Texting sends the short code 313131 to the business owner. “Text DEALZ to 313131 to get monthly coupons,” they can tell their customers. Customers who text the keyword are automatically added to the business’s list.
EZ Texting offers drip campaigns, text forwarding, recurring messages, reminders, and polls. Personalize messages for each customer using an existing database or a platform-generated list of subscribers. Constant Contact, Zendesk, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Squarespace and Salesforce are among the marketing tools that EZ Texting integrates with.
TextMagic
TextMagic was created in 2001 by Dan Houghton, a Cambridge math student. Since then, the company has grown to serve over 100,000 small business users globally. It was chosen as the best for quick setup because it allows users to send their first text message within minutes of signing up.
TextMagic, like other bulk text messaging services, allows users to import contacts, organize them, and schedule messages. It’s simple to begin. Create a free account, set up prepaid credit payments, and start texting right away.
TextMagic provides customers with virtual toll-free numbers in the US and Canada. There are also text-to-speech and email-to-text options available in TextMagic.
Finally, TextMagic uses Zapier to connect with thousands of third-party apps. It has an API that allows developers to integrate it with virtually any business software.
TextMagic’s pricing is pay-per-use. Prices start at $0.04 per text in the US and vary by country. The company also offers a 30-day free trial with a $4 monthly subscription fee.
SlickText
SlickText was founded in 2012 by Matt Baglia. It now serves over 70,000 users for companies like FedEx, ESPN, Lyft, and IHOP. Our runner-up offers a full suite of text messaging features in an intuitive interface.
SlickText’s user-friendly interface allows even non-text message marketing experts to quickly master the platform. On the company’s website, you can learn how to create an account, reserve a keyword, and set up autoresponders. Call, email, or live chat with customer service.
SlickText includes drip campaigns, autoresponders, scheduling, picture messaging, surveys, birthday texts, and text-to-win contests.
SlickText also integrates with over 2,000 third-party apps via Zapier, including Facebook Ads, Twitter, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM, Shopify, and more.
Twilio
Twilio is a cloud communications platform that launched an API in 2008 for cloud-based phone calls. The company released a text messaging API in 2010 and SMS short codes in 2011.
Twilio Studio is available for non-developers. This drag-and-drop builder lets users create surveys, appointment reminders, autoresponders, call forwarding, call center workflows, and more.
Finally, users can connect Zapier to Twilio to completely avoid coding. Sending and receiving text messages via email or Slack or Google Sheets are examples.
Twilio’s SMS features are pay-per-use. Using local or toll-free numbers or shortcodes costs $0.0075 per message. Picture messages cost $0.0200 to send and $0.0100 to receive via local numbers or shortcodes.
Twilio also offers dedicated local and toll-free numbers for $1 and $2 respectively. It costs $0.50 per month to use existing local or toll-free numbers.