Text Subscription Service: Top 12 Platforms & How to Create a Text Subscription for 2025

You’ve seen it.

Instructions along the lines of: “Text xxxxx to ###-###-#### to receive updates on [XYZ].”

You’ve even signed up for a text subscription service yourself… whether it’s prescription updates at your local pharmacy or deals at your favorite online store or updates from a local restaurant.

But what if you’d like to know how set up a text subscription service for your own business?

How exactly do you go about that?

Is it hard? Is it stressful? And how do you know which text system you should use to help you create your text message subscription service?

We’ll walk you through 12 of the top text subscription services, plus 3 easy steps to create a text subscription for your own business.

Sound good? Good!

Let’s get started.

Top 12 text subscription services

To help you narrow down your search, here are 12 of the top SMS subscription services available to you—that is, these are 12 services that allow you to create a text subscription so you can send out text messages to your audience.

(After that, we’ll go over specifically how to create a text subscription service.)

One thing to keep in mind is that almost all major SMS platforms have standard services such as:

• Text-to-join capabilities for your prospective subscribers
• Customizable sign-up form for your prospective subscribers
• Spreadsheet importing to load in your contacts
• Bulk SMS messaging
• Message scheduling
• SMS drip campaign creation
• SMS auto-replies
• Segmentation of your contact list
• 2-way communication options
• Automatic opt-out functionality (i.e., “Reply STOP to unsubscribe”)
• Ability to save message templates
• Message reporting and analytics
• Support for the integration site Zapier

In this sense, “text to subscribe” services are often very comparable from a feature standpoint.

With that being understood, here’s an analysis of some of the top services.

Mobile Text Alerts

Of course, we have to start with our own platform. 🙂

Mobile Text Alerts was started in 2011 by a gentleman by the name of James Pelton (otherwise known as my flesh-and-blood brother). He started it from his basement, both building and promoting the service essentially as a solopreneur until he brought me on to help with customer support in 2014 and the rest is history.

Now my brother has sold the business and he’s now something of a social media influencer. But Mobile Text Alerts’ legacy as a text subscription service lives on…

Standout features

• iMessage capabilities
• AI options such as an AI SMS Chatbot, an AI message copy suggestion tool, an AI message shortener, and an AI image generator for your text messages
• A robust SMS API

Pricing

• 500 message plan
  • $25 per month for a monthly plan or $20 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 500 messages per month
• 1,000 message plan
  • $44 per month for a monthly plan or $36 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 1,000 messages per month
• 2,000 message plan
  • $74 per month for a monthly plan or $58 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 2,000 messages per month
• 5,000 message plan
  • $149 per month for a monthly plan or $119 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 5,000 messages per month
• 10,000 message plan
  • $274 per month for a monthly plan or $219 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 10,000 messages per month
• 20,000 message plan
  • $499 per month for a monthly plan or $389 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 20,000 messages per month
• 50,000 message plan
  • $1074 per month for a monthly plan or $874 per month for an annual plan
  • Allows up to 50,000 messages per month
• Enterprise – custom

Pros and cons

• Pro: Some unique features such as iMessage and AI SMS Chatbots
• Pro: Reviewers overwhelmingly rate “ease of use” as a top benefit
• Pro: Reviewers also rate customer support highly
• Con: Reviewers report message delivery issues (although this can be an issue with any platform due to increasing mobile carrier scrutiny)

Bird

Bird is a broad messaging service (not only SMS) that was founded as Mobile Tulip in 2011. It was rebranded to MessageBird. They initially only offered SMS but expanded to include email, voice, and WhatsApp.

They recently rebranded again to Bird and now offer a CRM service as well. They present themselves as “The AI-first CRM for Marketing, Service and Payments.”

Standout features

• WhatsApp support
• CRM
• Management options for your customers’ online payments
• Integration options
• Popup forms

Pricing

With Bird, all plans are an annual upfront contract.

• 3,000 monthly contacts plan
  • $45 per month
  • Up to 30,000 email, SMS, or WhatsApp messages
• 10,000 monthly contacts
  • $100 per month
  • Up to 100,000 email, SMS, or WhatsApp message
• 20,000 monthly contacts
  • $185 per month
  • Up to 200,000 email, SMS, or WhatsApp message
• 30,000 monthly contacts
  • $270 per month
  • Up to 300,000 email, SMS, or WhatsApp message
• 40,000 monthly contacts
  • $355 per month
  • Up to 400,000 email, SMS, or WhatsApp message
• 50,000 monthly contacts
  • $440 per month
  • Up to 500,000 email, SMS, or WhatsApp message
• Over 50,000 monthly contacts (enterprise pricing)
  • Custom

Pros and cons

• Pro: a multi-channel solution
• Pro: seems to have good adoption internationally
• Con: complaints about pricing seem to be a top concern among reviewers

SlickText

SlickText is a text message subscription service that was founded in 2012 by Matt Baglia, Bobby Angilella, and Ryan Kinal. It currently has over 70,000 users across 40,000 organizations.

Standout features

• Popup forms
• Self-cleaning lists
• Native integrations with some major software

Pricing

• 500 texts per month plan – $29 per month
• 1000 texts per month plan – $49 per month
• 2000 texts per month plan – $79 per month
• 3,600 texts per month plan – $139 per month
• 5,000 texts per month plan – $189 per month
• 10,000 texts per month plan – $350 per month
• 25,000 texts per month plan – $750 per month
• 50,000 texts per month plan – $1,250 per month
• 100,000 texts per month plan – $1,999 per month
• Enterprise-level plan – custom

Pros and cons

• Pro: many customers report “ease of use” as a major pro
• Pro: customer support is also a major compliment
• Con: many customers are concerned about it being expensive

Attentive

Attentive is an email and SMS platform with offices in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Sydney. Historically, it has particularly catered to ecommerce marketers and business owners.

It’s currently headed by CEO Amit Jhawar.

Standout features

• AI options that help you automatically plan and send your messages
• Robust SMS and email editor/sender

Pricing

Attentive’s pricing is unlisted—which likely means that they don’t consider pricing to be a major selling point.

Pros and cons

• Pro: ecommerce focus can be a plus for those in the ecommerce industry
• Pro: facilitates both SMS and email
• Con: could be cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses

Podium

Podium was started in 2014 by Eric Rea as a solution to help companies get more reviews and has grown into a multichannel messaging company. Today, it is branded as an “AI employee” that can help you get more leads and sales.

SMS is one of the services Podium offers—thereby making it an SMS subscription service.

Standout features

• Review collection
• “AI employee” features that automatically respond to customers and prospects
• Phone calling options

Pricing

• Core Plan
  • $399 per month
  • 250 messages per month
  • Many other non-SMS-related services
• Pro Plan
  • $599 per month
  • 500 messages per month
  • Many other non-SMS-related services
• Signature Plan
  • Custom pricing
  • Custom features

Pros and cons

• Pro: offers several robust features
• Pro: multichannel communication
• Con: listed plans are expensive for some businesses and don’t give you many messages to send
• Con: may be overkill for your needs, depending on your situation

Klaviyo

Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen started Klaviyo in 2012 as a way to bring together data and marketing. It is now known primarily as a marketing platform for email and text messages.

Klaviyo particularly specializes in serving customers in the ecommerce industry.

Standout features

• Customer profiles that allow you to track customer data and predict their behavior
• More robust data tracking
• Review collection

Pricing

Pricing via Klaviyo is highly customizable based on how many active “profiles” you have in the Klaviyo platform and how many text messages you want to be able to send.

(Plans include email capabilities as well.)

As a representative sample, here are a few of the plan options:

• With 251–500 active profiles and 1,250 max SMS per month: $35 per month
• With 501–1,000 active profiles and 2,500 max SMS per month: $55 per month
• With 5,001–5,500 active profiles and 12,500 max SMS per month: $225 per month
• With 11,001–11,500 active profiles and 35,000 max SMS per month: $540 per month

Pros and cons

• Pro: Optimized well for ecommerce
• Pro: Offers both SMS and email
• Con: Complicated pricing
• Con: May be more than you need

Braze

Bill Magnuson, Jon Hyman, and Mark Ghermezian founded Appboy, which later became Braze, around the year 2011. Ten years later, in 2021, Braze became a publicly traded company.

They currently present themselves as a customer engagement platform, offering several communication channels to connect with customers, including a text subscription service.

Standout features

• WhatsApp capabilities
• Mobile app messaging options
• Web messaging capabilities

Pricing

Braze’s pricing is unlisted—which likely means that they don’t consider pricing to be a major selling point.

Pros and cons

• Pro: many reviewers list “ease of use” as the biggest pro for Braze
• Pro: customer support appears to be a major pro of Braze as well
• Con: ironically, although an overwhelming number of reviewers had positive feelings about Braze’s ease of use, the biggest complaint about Braze is a difficult learning curve
• Con: a lack of transparency on pricing

EZ Texting

EZ Texting is one of the older companies on this list, having been founded almost 20 years ago, in 2005.

EZ Texting is a simple SMS platform along the lines of Mobile Text Alerts and SlickText.

Standout features

• Stock image library
• Image editor
• An AI 2-way messaging solution

Pricing

EZ Texting’s pricing structure is different from most other SMS platforms. The platform is essentially pay-per-text, but you pay a base subscription fee that gives you access to a particular rate per message.

The higher your monthly subscription fee, the lower the rate is for your per-message cost.

All plans come with 500 messaging credits per month…

• For a $0.03 per message rate: $25 per month billed monthly, or $20 per month billed annually
• For a $0.025 per message rate: $75 per month billed monthly, or $60 per month billed annually
• For a $0.02 per message rate: $125 per month billed monthly, or $100 per month billed annually
• Customer Enterprise pricing

Pros and cons

• Pro: appropriately, reviewers report that EZ Texting is “easy to use”
• Pro: image library and editor
• Con: pricing is more complicated than some other platforms

TextUs

TextUs is a smaller player in the text subscription service sphere, but it has a good review presence online. It was founded in 2013, so it’s not new to the game. It’s headquartered in Denver.

Standout features

• Direct integrations with other popular SaaS products such as Salesforce, Hubspot, and Workday
• Typing indicators in your shared inbox
• Automatically recording message history into your CRM

Pricing

Pricing is not spelled out as you need to get on a demo to get a custom quote, but it starts at $300 per month.

Pros and cons

• Pro: many reviewers reported “ease of use” as a positive factor
• Con: users reported messaging issues as the top con (however, messaging issues can be a problem across the board)
• Con: higher starting price point at $300

Esendex

Esendex is a data and communication API service that offers an SMS API, so it can be programmed and implemented as a text subscription service. Esendex was founded in 2001 by Adam Bird and Julian Hucker as an SMS service and has since grown to acquire other text message subscription services across the world. (That makes it the oldest company on this list!)

It’s currently headquartered in Nottingham, UK.

Standout features

• Phone verification
• Mass voice call capabilities
• SMS reseller program

Pricing

Esendex’s pricing is unlisted.

Pros and cons

• Pro: easy for developers to set up and integrate
• Pro: able to incorporate SMS into your own apps/services
• Con: must contact for pricing

Twilio

Twilio is one of the go-to text subscription service providers for businesses with development capacity looking to implement their own SMS solution. It was founded in 2008 by Jeff Lawson, Evan Cooke, and John Wolthuis.

As a communications API provider, it doesn’t have an SMS platform but offers SMS subscription services among other communication solutions.

Standout features

• WhatsApp capabilities
• Voice call capabilities
• Phone number identification

Pricing

Pricing for Twilio is on a per-messed basis:

• $0.0079 per message for SMS
• $0.02 per message for MMS (picture messages)
• Plus, you’ll need to pay carrier fees:
  • $0.003 per message for AT&T
  • $0.003 per message for T-Mobile
  • $0.003 per message for Verizon
  • $0.005 per message for US Cellular
  • $0.0035 per message for other carriers
• You’ll also need to pay for inbound messages (messages that you receive):
  • $0.0079 per message for inbound SMS
  • $0.01 per message for inbound MMS
• Additionally, you’ll need to pay for the phone numbers that you use:
  • (Longcodes) $1.15 per phone number for the first 1,000 numbers
  • (Longcodes) $0.575 per phone number for phone numbers greater than 1,000
  • (Toll-free numbers) $2.15 per phone number for the first 1,000 numbers
  • (Toll-free numbers) $1.63 per phone number for phone numbers greater than 1,000

Pros and cons

• Pro: very customizable for developers
• Pro: optimized to be scalable
• Pro: pricing can be inexpensive
• Con: pricing can be confusing
• Con: need technical expertise to implement

Salesmsg

The final text subscription service we’ll analyze is Salesmsg (pronounced “sales message”). This SMS platform was founded in 2017.

Salesmsg is an SMS platform that can be implemented out of the box (no development work needed).

Standout features

• Calling capabilities
• AI-generated response option
• Audio texting option

Pricing

• 500 messages plan
  • $25 per month
  • $0.04 for additional credits
• 1,000 messages plan
  • $49 per month
  • $0.035 for additional credits
• 2,500 messages plan
  • $99 per month
  • $0.0325 for additional credits
• 5,000 messages plan
  • $179 per month
  • $0.0315 for additional credits
• 7,500 messages plan
  • $249 per month
  • $0.031 for additional credits
• 10,000+ messages plan – custom pricing

Pros and cons

• Pro: many reviewers praise Salesmsg’s “ease of use”
• Pro: reviewers also appreciate Salesmsg’s integration capabilities
• Pro: reviewers overall don’t seem to have much negative feedback
• Con: with how the pricing is set up, seems more geared toward very small businesses

Creating a Text Subscription - Step 1: Select a Texting Platform

Here’s the great news…

Setting up a text subscription doesn’t have to be difficult.

You don’t even need to know any coding. Or really have any prior knowledge of anything.

All you need is an account with a texting platform like Mobile Text Alerts.

Texting platforms allow you to manage a system of contacts and send out automated texts, as well as mass texting campaigns.

For example:

• Your recipients can start receiving an automated series of messages once they send a text into your account’s dedicated phone number
• Your recipients can receive automated messages based on specific trigger words they text in
• Your recipients can simply sign up for your text list and be sent one-off messages whenever it’s relevant (for example, when you run or sale or promotion)

You’re able to set up a text subscription regardless of technical ability.

You’ll first just need to find a text platform that works for your situation and your budget. Check out the 14 Best Text Messaging Services.

A free trial will help you get a feel for how a texting platform will work for you. You don’t even have to provide your credit card so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to cancel if it doesn’t work out.

Better yet, a free demo will give you a one-on-one walkthrough as well, so that you can get all the info you’re looking for and get live answers to all your questions.

Once you have a free account set up, you’re ready to start getting your campaign started.

Creating a Text Subscription - Step 2: Set Up Your Campaign

Once you’re set up on a texting platform, you’re ready to create your text subscription campaign.

There are a few options for going about this, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Drip Campaign

If you already have a series of messages in mind to send to all of your subscribers, you can set them up in a text drip campaign.

All you need to do is write up the content for all of your messages into a flow within your texting platform.

With a drip campaign tool, you’re able to create as many messages as you’d like to have in your flow.

You can also have as many delays in between messages as you want as well.

This means you could set up an automatic messaging flow similar to the following:

• Someone in your audience subscribes to your text messages
• They receive an automated message right away
• They receive another automated message 2 days later
• They receive another automated message 4 days after that
• They receive another automated message 7 days after that
• They receive a final automated message 14 days after that

In this way you can “drip” out your text subscription campaign over a series of messages and delays that you specify.

A “drip” subscription is ideal for…

• Businesses looking to run a series of promotions
• Businesses looking to onboard new customers or new trial users
• Businesses looking to run an educational campaign

“Smart” Conditional Campaign

Another option when creating a text subscription is to set up an automated conditional campaign using “Smart Replies.”

These “Smart Replies” are specific words you can set up that will trigger specific automated responses.

In this way, you can create a texting “bot” of sorts that your subscribers can interact with according to the trigger words you set up.

Here’s an example:

• Your subscriber texts the word HELLO.
• Your subscriber receives the message, “Thanks for texting in to [company name]! What do you want to know more about? Reply with SALES, NEW PRODUCTS, or QUESTIONS.”
• The subscriber replies with “SALES.”
• The subscriber receives the message, “25% off storewide THIS WEEK ONLY! Use promo code TEXT25 when checking out to get these savings: [link]”
• The subscriber replies with NEW PRODUCTS.
• The subscriber receives the message, “You’ll love these brand new [product names]! Check them out here: [link]”
• The subscriber replies with “QUESTIONS.”
• The subscriber receives the message, “Please reply back with your question and a rep will get in touch! Or you can reply with any of the following words to get quicker answers: TROUBLESHOOTING, NONPROFIT DISCOUNT, JOB OPENINGS”
• And so on…

So your text subscription can be entirely hands-off and automated if you decide to go this route.

A “smart” subscription is ideal for…

• Businesses looking to reduce the amount of customer support contacts that are needed
• Businesses looking to send targeted promotions based on their leads’ interests
• Businesses looking to use texting to help make the sales process easier

General Subscription

You may want to just set up a general text subscription.

By “general subscription,” we mean something you don’t have to totally pre-plan ahead of time.

For example, maybe you’ll be running irregular promotions so you can’t set something up beforehand.

You can get your subscribers to opt in by providing them with some sort of discount or free item or giveaway entry. (More on that here in a bit.)

Then you can send your campaign messages whenever you’re ready by just typing out your message from your texting platform and scheduling it for the time you’d like it to go out.

You can segment your subscriber list into groups to help keep your text subscription campaigns organized and targeted.

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Once you have your texting platform up and running, and you have your campaigns set up (or at least have an idea of the kinds of campaigns you want to send), you’re ready to start getting subscribers.

Creating a Text Subscription - Step 3: Get People to Subscribe

So once your campaigns are set up, how do you actually get subscribers to receive your messages?

This question can be broken up into 2 parts:

• What are methods to get people to subscribe?
• What are strategies to get people to subscribe?

In other words, what are the mechanisms to add subscribers into your text list, and how do you actually convince people to subscribe?

Creating a Text Subscription - Opt-in Methods

Your texting platform will offer several methods to add people into your texting database.

Some of these include the following…

Manually Adding

If you collect subscriber information and opt-in consent from an external source, you can load that information into your database manually.

For example, is there a way to get people from your CRM into a texting database?

The answer is yes!

You can do this either individually one-by-one, or by importing a list from a spreadsheet.

This is the most tedious of the methods to add people to your text subscription database, but can be useful if you already have an existing list you’re working with and don’t want to start from scratch.

Texting In

People can opt themselves into your text subscription by sending a text into your account’s dedicated phone number.

Once they send a text into your number, the system will automatically opt them into your texting database.

You can even assign “text-to-join” keywords to particular groups on your account, so that when people text in, they are automatically added to one of your group segments.

This method is the most popular method because it is convenient. The main disadvantage of it is that you won’t get any identifying information for your subscribers other than their phone number.

QR Codes

Your account will come with automatically-generated QR codes you can share with would-be subscribers.

Then they can scan the QR code to be subscribed.

Easy, no?

This method is particularly convenient if you have an in-person location.

The QR code allows you to physically advertise an opt-in method to get people to join your text subscription. So you can include your QR code at check-out, throughout your store or physical location, at the front door.

Then people can just whip out their phones then and there to scan the code.

Web Sign-Up Form

Your texting platform will also come with a free link you can share with your customers. The link will lead them to an online form.

Once they fill out the form, their phone number and other info will be automatically loaded into your texting database.

This method is less convenient than the text-in or QR code methods mentioned previously because it requires would-be subscribers to go through a few more steps.

However, this option gives you more opportunities to collect more information on your subscribers - because it allows them to provide their name, email address, or whatever other data you want them to provide.

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You can use one, several, or all of these methods to get subscribers loaded into your text subscription. (You can also use automations via API or other integrations.)

But… how do you actually get people to subscribe?

Creating a Text Subscription - Opt-in Strategies

Here are some strategies to try to entice people to join your text subscription list…

Incentivize, Incentivize, Incentivize!

The best strategy to get more subscribers is to offer a really enticing incentive.

The more appealing the incentive, the better.

What kinds of incentives can you offer?

It varies widely depending on your business, your budget, and your comfort level. But some examples would include:

• A free item (e.g. “Get a FREE [fill in the blank] when you sign up for our texts!”
• A discount or free shipping on the subscriber’s next purchase (e.g. “Get 30% off your next order just by joining our texts!”)
• An entry into a larger giveaway (e.g. a Kindle Fire tablet or a $100 gift card or lunch with the CEO - “Get a FREE entry to win a $100 Amazon gift card by signing up for texts! Winner announced tomorrow!”)

People may sign up just to get the free incentive. But they may also stick around because they enjoy the content you send.

Plaster Your Sign-Up Instructions Everywhere

You could call this the “brute force” strategy…

It involves advertising your text subscription sign-up instructions everywhere you possibly can.

Do you have a social media page? Post the instructions there.

Email campaigns? There too.

Webinars? Snail mail campaigns? In person? Yep, yep, and yep.

Note that if you want to try this “brute force” strategy, this should be done in addition to the incentive strategy mentioned above.

Send Content Your Subscribers Consider Valuable

If you want to get and maintain a large subscriber list, it goes without saying that you need to send content that your recipients consider valuable.

Texting is a highly effective way to communicate.

But access to your subscribers’ texting inbox also comes with a weight of responsibility.

While people can tolerate more “fluffy” content in their email inboxes, they are not so patient with texts.

You have to make yourself worthy of interrupting their day by giving them content they actually want to see, and by not sending too many messages.

If you clearly communicate the value your text subscription will provide, that will help you get more people to subscribe

As a side note related to this, make sure to let people know upfront that they can opt out anytime by replying “STOP” to any message. (This feature is handled automatically by your texting platform.)

Not only is including this disclaimer generally required anyway, it will help give potential subscribers more confidence knowing they can easily unsubscribe whenever they want.

Get a Texting Platform So You Can Create a Text Subscription Today

The next step in deciding if you should get a text subscription going for your business is to try out a texting platform and see for yourself how it works.

Get 50 free messages to try it out for yourself (no credit card needed).