8 Best SMS Marketing Software for Small Businesses

SMS marketing (aka text marketing) is one of the most underutilized, yet lucrative marketing strategies for building brand awareness, leads, sales, and customer loyalty—and it’s simple with the right tools. We compared dozens of apps to find the best SMS marketing software based on cost, features, and ease of use. The tools below can do all the heavy lifting for you and get you instant results.

• Textedly: Best SMS Marketing Platform Overall
• SlickText: Best for Growing Your Subscriber Base
• Brevo: Best for Precise Customer Targeting
• SimpleTexting: Best for Two-way Messaging
• ClickSend: Best for Converting Emails Into SMS Campaigns
• Twilio: Best for Fully Custom SMS Campaigns
• EZ Texting: Best for MMS Messages
• Attentive: Best AI-powered SMS Marketing Platform

Best SMS Marketing Software Platforms at a Glance

Providers	Pricing	Features	Learn more
	From $26 monthly	Collect opt-ins, send mass texts, analyze results SMS drip campaigns and surveys	Visit TextedlyorRead More Below
	From $29 monthly	Best opt-in collection features Automations, analytics, and list segmentation	Visit SlickTextorRead More Below
	From $1.09/100 texts	Precise customer segmentation SMS customization, automation, and analytics	Visit BrevoorRead More Below
	From $23.20 monthly	Two-way SMS Automations, segmentation, and opt-in collection	Visit SimpleTextingorRead More Below
	From 2.39 cents/text	Automatically converts emails to SMS campaigns Two-way SMS, MMS messages, and automations	Visit ClickSendorRead More Below
	From 0.79 cents/text	Fully custom SMS API Two-way messaging, personalization, and campaign analytics	Visit TwilioorRead More Below
	From $20 monthly	Create and send MMS or SMS texts Two-way messaging, customer segmentation, and opt-ins	Visit EZ textingorRead More Below
	Custom	AI-powered SMS marketing platform List segmentation, two-way messaging, and opt-ins	Visit AttentiveorRead More Below
Note: MMS messaging refers to any text message with media like images or video (MMS stands for “Multimedia Messaging Service”). SMS, or “Short Messaging Service,” refers to regular text messages with no media.

Textedly: Best SMS Marketing Software Overall for Small Businesses

As Textedly offers all the essential features for building a text marketing campaign from scratch in an easy-to-use platform, it’s our top pick overall for the best SMS marketing software for small businesses. At reasonable enough prices, you have everything you need—and then some—to create text marketing campaigns. Collect opt-ins, upload your recipients list, personalize your messages, and set up drip campaigns easily, all in one platform.

Here are all the features Textedly has to offer:

• Opt-in collection via web forms and text keywords
• Bulk SMS sending
• Text scheduling
• Two-way messaging
• Drip SMS campaigns
• SMS campaign analytics
• Auto-reply texts
• Text personalization
• Text surveys
• MMS messages
• Review-request messages
• Payment collection via SMS
• Long messages (up to 445 characters)
• Zapier integration
• Instagram text integration
• Built-in link shortener
• Monday to Sunday live chat support

One of the most full-featured yet easy-to-use SMS marketing platforms around, Textedly is our overall top recommendation for SMS text marketing services for small businesses. Go from setting up your account to scheduling your SMS campaign in less than an hour. Start with the free trial to try out its features, and then upgrade to a paid plan for a more long-term solution.

Visit Textedly

SlickText: Best for Growing Your Subscriber Base

Subscriber growth is the first step in any opt-in marketing campaign, which is something SlickText prioritizes. Where other SMS marketing software only have opt-in collection as an extra feature, SlickText prioritizes it with website pop-ups, QR codes, landing pages, and more as available opt-in channels. Naturally, this makes it the best platform for growing your subscriber base.

But SlickText also offers more, including all the essentials for building a text campaign plus some extras like customer segmentation and loyalty programs. In all, SlickText has one of the most comprehensive toolkits around for text marketing.

Its main drawback is that its paid plans have a more expensive cost-per-text than most others. However, it also offers a free SMS marketing trial with 50 credits, and its subscriber growth features are unmatched in scope, helping you build a solid text marketing strategy.

Here are all SlickText’s features:

• Bulk SMS sending
• Opt-in collections including text-to-join, forms, pop-ups, QR codes, and email capture
• SMS automations for drip campaigns
• Two-way messaging
• Campaign analytics
• Customer segmentation (with custom fields)
• Coupon and loyalty program management
• MMS messaging
• Integrations with Shopify, HubSpot, Zapier, and various email services
• Live chat support

Build a top-to-bottom SMS campaign with SlickText’s comprehensive suite of features, from collecting campaign subscribers to sending automated and targeted campaigns and measuring your results. Its credit rollovers are also a plus for building a long-term SMS strategy. Get started today with 50 credits for free.

Visit SlickText

Brevo: Best for Precise Customer Targeting

With the customer segmentation feature from Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), you can be sure that your campaigns will reach the most relevant recipients. This maximizes your budget and increases your campaigns’ chances of success. It also allows for more precise campaigns. For example, if your objective is to increase foot traffic to a new store, you can send SMS campaigns to recipients in the nearby area instead of sending to your entire database.

On the flip side, automations are limited to standard alerts like shipping updates—not for complex drip campaigns. Still, Brevo is one of the most affordable SMS marketing software around, especially for building targeted campaigns.

Here are the features you’ll find on Brevo:

• Bulk SMS sending
• Customer segmentation
• SMS personalizations
• Automated text alerts
• Campaign analytics
• Support via email, phone, and knowledge base

Sign up for Brevo and use its customer segmentation feature to build highly targeted SMS marketing campaigns. No setup is required—create an account, build and send your campaigns, and track your SMS campaigns all on its user-friendly platform.

Visit Brevo

SimpleTexting: Best for Two-way Messaging

SimpleTexting’s defining trait is its two-way messaging feature, which allows you to build meaningful conversations with your recipients that lead to real actions and conversions instead of just being left on read. This can help with everything from answering customer questions to collecting survey responses. There are also templated messages to streamline this process, and you can collaborate with teammates on responses via the shared dashboard.

However, SimpleTexting also has helpful SMS tools, including the essentials like bulk sending, campaign analytics, and automations, plus extras like opt-in collection, customer segmentation, and even artificial intelligence (AI) copy and image generation tools to help create your campaigns. The only feature it lacks is an email-to-SMS converter, which you’ll find on ClickSend instead. And, you get all of SimpleTexting’s tools on any plan—pricing only increases the more texts you send.

Here are all of SimpleTexting’s features:

• Two-way text messaging
• Shared platform for team collaboration on messages
• Bulk message sending
• Campaign analytics
• SMS automations for drip campaigns
• Opt-in collections (web forms and SMS keywords)
• MMS messages
• AI text and image generating tool
• Customer segmentation with custom fields
• Mailchimp and Zapier integrations
• Phone and chat support

On the whole, SimpleTexting has the basics for creating an SMS campaign, plus extras like two-way messaging, opt-in collections, and AI writing tools. However, while these are all helpful features, its team collaboration platform isn’t likely very useful for small business owners—it’s better suited for larger companies with an already-established text marketing strategy. Still, for easy two-way conversations, SimpleTexting is one of the best candidates.

Visit SimpleTexting

ClickSend: Best for Converting Emails to SMS Campaigns

ClickSend is unique for its automatic email-to-text message converter, so it’s the best SMS marketing software if you already have an ongoing email marketing campaign that you want to extend into SMS. However, it doesn’t have any features for collecting opt-ins (for example, web forms or keyword replies), so it may not be the best choice if you’re building your text marketing campaign from scratch—for that, Textedly would be better equipped.

Here are ClickSend’s features:

• Email-to-SMS converter API
• Bulk SMS sending
• Two-way messaging
• MMS messages
• SMS automations
• Automated text notifications
• 700-plus app integrations

Extend your email campaigns into text messages easily with ClickSend’s email-to-text converter API. Or, send mass text messages at affordable rates with a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme.

Visit ClickSend

Twilio: Best for Fully Custom SMS Campaigns

As an API, Twilio’s SMS marketing platform is completely customized for each business. Therefore, it’s the better option for larger businesses with a broad recipient base spanning regular SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Business Messages, and that already have a specific SMS marketing strategy in mind and need custom tools to execute them.

For example, if you need to create an automated drip campaign on SMS and Facebook Messenger, Twilio’s API is the best-equipped tool—you’ll only need to do some coding. However, this very same feature is also Twilio’s biggest difficulty—because everything is custom-made, you’ll need to do some coding, which can be tricky and time-consuming, although Twilio offers plenty of support.

Another drawback is that although two-way messaging is allowed, there’s also a cost for incoming messages, which on other SMS marketing platforms is usually free.

Take a look at Twilio’s features below:

• Fully customizable API for sending marketing SMS campaigns
• SMS marketing automations
• Campaign analytics with click tracking
• Two-way messaging (with cost for incoming messages)
• Customer segmentation and personalizations
• MMS messages
• Messaging on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Business Messages
• Built-in link shortener

Overall, for a fully customized SMS marketing platform, there is no more comprehensive tool on the market than Twilio. With a little coding know-how (which you can learn on their site or by contacting the Twilio team), you can build powerful, custom, diverse text campaigns that target your specific needs.

Visit Twilio

EZ Texting: Best for MMS Messages

EZ Texting’s MMS messaging features stand out from others in that it has the most comprehensive tools. With a built-in image editor and library via Shutterstock, you won’t need another design platform to design your MMS content. It even supports GIFs and short videos as well as images.

However, EZ Texting’s overall SMS marketing software is also extensive, with features from SMS automations and campaign analytics to contact segmentation, opt-in collections, and third-party app integrations like Zapier. All of these features are accessible on any plan, and although there is no free plan, paid plans are generally small business-friendly—however, plans are capped by daily message limits.

Here are EZ Texting’s features:

• MMS features include an image editor with templates, image library via Shutterstock, and support for GIFs and short videos
• Bulk SMS sending
• SMS automations for drip campaigns
• Two-way messaging
• Campaign analytics
• Contact segmentation with custom fields
• Opt-in collection via digital forms, SMS keywords, and QR codes
• Built-in link shortener
• Mobile app
• Textable numbers
• Live chat support

EZ Texting’s only caveat as an SMS marketing platform is the daily message limits, which can be a hindrance if you plan to send many campaigns to numerous people each day. Other than that, this text marketing software can fulfill nearly any objective, from growing your subscriber list to creating drip campaigns. And for MMS messages, it has undoubtedly the best tools around.

Visit EZ Texting

Attentive: Best AI-powered SMS Marketing Platform

Attentive’s integrated AI is easily its biggest standout point. AI is incorporated in all tools, including customer segmentation, message delivery, and drip SMS campaigns—although the latter still hasn’t fully launched, so you’ll need to get on a waitlist. Plus, once customers opt-in to your campaigns, their data points are automatically collected and stored, and then used to refine your segmentation better, allowing for highly targeted campaigns.

However, on the negative side, as it’s such a comprehensive platform, it’s not the best tool if you need a campaign set up and sent quickly. For example, its AI customer segmentation feature won’t be fully utilized if you use your own recipients list instead of the one created with Attentive’s opt-in channels. Another major drawback is that pricing isn’t transparent at all—you’ll need to book a demo and request a quote for a cost estimate.

Here’s a rundown of Attentive’s features:

• Bulk SMS sending
• Detailed campaign analytics
• AI-powered customer segmentation
• Two-way messaging (both AI and human-powered)
• AI-powered delivery optimization
• Automatic legal compliance
• 30-plus opt-in collection channels (landing pages, social media, etc.)
• AI-powered campaign creator and drip campaigns (still on a waitlist)
• Support via email and knowledge base

Attentive is best utilized as an all-around SMS marketing platform, such as if you’re building your SMS campaign entirely from scratch. While the non-transparent pricing can be a drawback, you’ll get a full AI-powered suite of everything you need to build a solid and sustainable SMS marketing strategy, even if you’re a complete beginner.

Visit Attentive

How We Evaluated the Best SMS Marketing Software

With dozens of SMS marketing software available, we used specific parameters to evaluate the best ones for small and growing businesses to include on this list. For example, because cost is a significant factor in small business decisions, we only included platforms with pricing plans that wouldn’t break the bank. We also included only those with the essential SMS marketing features that let you easily set up and send a text campaign.

Here are the factors we considered in choosing the top SMS marketing platforms:

• Cost: Every business has a limited marketing budget, so cost was a substantial factor in choosing the platforms above. While none have free plans, nearly all have a free trial, and all have affordable and scalable pricing for small businesses, whether as packaged plans or on a pay-as-you-go scheme.
• Essential features: An SMS marketing campaign requires three primary features to work: the ability to send bulk SMS messages, SMS automations (such as automatic text alerts or conditional workflows for drip campaigns), and campaign analytics. All of the platforms above have all three to let you send a basic SMS campaign effectively.
• Extra features: While all the above SMS marketing platforms can do the primary task of sending a bulk SMS campaign, many also have extra helpful tools for optimizing them—for example, opt-in collection tools, two-way messaging, and customer segmentation. These help strengthen your SMS campaign and further your chances at success.
• Ease of use: Text marketing isn’t as widely used as other marketing strategies, so we also took into account how easy it was to use each platform. All of the text marketing software above are simple to set up, have easily navigable interfaces even for beginners, and let you build and send an SMS campaign in less than an hour.
• Support: While the platforms above are simple enough to navigate, any user will likely need additional assistance later on, e.g., when using a specific feature like drip SMS campaigns. Therefore, we also considered the support offered by the platforms and ensured that customers can reach them either via phone, email, or live chat, at least five days a week.

Key Considerations When Choosing an SMS Marketing Tool

Along with the parameters above, many other key factors also go into deciding which is the best SMS marketing service for your business. Each SMS marketing platform has unique traits and features that make one a better fit for your business than the other. For instance, if you have an ongoing email strategy, ClickSend would likely be the better fit, while if you need a fully custom solution, Twilio is your best bet.

When choosing an SMS marketing software for your business, these are the key considerations to keep in mind:

• Features: Evaluate the features of each platform against the objectives for your own SMS marketing strategy. For example, if your main goal is to grow your subscriber base, choose a platform with strong opt-in features like SlickText. If you need to send images or video, start with an MMS-friendly platform like EZ Texting, and so on.
• Scalability: You want your SMS marketing platform to be able to grow alongside your business. Evaluate scalability in terms of pricing, plan features, text sends or audience size limits, and so on. This sets you up for growth and eliminates having to switch to other providers later on when your needs evolve.
• Metrics and analytics: Evaluate the analytics offered by each platform to see whether they reflect your objectives as well as your business’ measures of success and growth.
• Reputation: Part of good due diligence when selecting any type of vendor is to research case studies, past work, and clients’ experience. An easy way to do this is to scour review sites like Trustpilot and G2.com, and read customer reviews for real-life insight on each platform and how they work for small business owners.
• App integrations: Most SMS marketing software come with third-party app integrations, but some have more than others. If your workplace already uses a certain app or software heavily (for instance, Salesforce or Shopify), check whether the platform integrates with that app to make your overall process much easier.
• Credibility: Credibility is an equally essential factor in choosing a provider, especially in SMS marketing, as there are legal intricacies involved (e.g., TCPA law compliance). Research each platform to ensure they follow legal guidelines and don’t employ any unethical methods (e.g., “black hat” (a marketing term for unethical tactics) strategies like texting recipients who have opted out).

Frequently Asked Questions

Which industry is best for SMS marketing?

The nature of SMS marketing makes it a great fit for retail stores, restaurants, ecommerce businesses, and service providers. SMS is excellent for offering discount codes, announcing time limited offers, and requesting reviews. Service businesses can use them to send appointment reminders, and they work seamlessly with customer loyalty programs. Also, because texts are sent via mobile, they’re great for any ecommerce company.

However, any small business that wants to share promotions, nurture leads who have opted in for information and updates, or generate referrals and repeat business may benefit from SMS marketing. For example, tax prep specialists may want to add text marketing to their local marketing plans and send a seasonal reminder for clients to book a tax session or audit.

Can I automate SMS marketing?

Yes—SMS automations are an available and effective feature with SMS marketing, depending on each platform. They can be as simple as delivery updates or appointment reminders, but some platforms offer more comprehensive automations for drip SMS marketing campaigns. Drip SMS automations can guide recipients through the entire customer journey based on specific parameters (for example, an abandoned cart drip campaign to complete a sale).

How much does SMS marketing software cost?

Most SMS marketing software are free to set up but cost around one to five cents per text message. Some platforms offer packaged plans with a monthly cost for a set number of text messages (most start upward of $20 monthly), while others offer a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme, so you only pay for what you need. For most platforms, these costs include extra features like campaign metrics, automations, and more.

Bottom Line

SMS marketing offers many benefits for your small business, from growing your brand awareness to increasing your revenue, and using the SMS marketing software above can help you do it the right way. These platforms can collect recipients, optimize and mass send your campaigns, and keep track of your performance, among others. For an all-around solution for all these and more, our top recommendation is Textedly, and you can get started with a free trial.

Visit Textedly