BUSINESS TEXTING SERVICE
Business texting services: business text messaging, two-way texting software, and business SMS compared
Two-way business text messaging with an AI that answers the inbound reply, priced flat instead of per seat, per credit, or per segment.
Tap a customer message above. The same AI agent replies on , in your brand's voice.
- Intent
- Action
- CRM
Handed to a human teammate
They pick up with the full conversation and context carried over. No dead ends, no repeating.
Sample conversation, not customer data.
A business texting service lets your company send and receive SMS from a real business number that a team shares, instead of from somebody's personal phone. The good ones add a shared inbox, contact records, templates, automations, and the A2P 10DLC registration that US carriers now require before they will deliver your messages reliably. That much is table stakes, and roughly a dozen vendors do it competently.
Two things actually decide which one you should buy, and neither is the headline monthly price.
The first is the billing unit, which is different at nearly every vendor in the category and makes list prices impossible to compare directly. TextUs charges a platform fee plus two cents a message on a twelve month commitment. SlickText sells credits in blocks against a monthly allowance. Textmagic has no plan fee at all and bills 4.9 cents per US SMS on its own numbers. Twilio bills per 160-character segment and expects you to build the product yourself. Textline and Podium do not publish a plan price. Run your real monthly volume through each formula before you compare anything, because at the same volume these models can land several hundred dollars apart.
The second is a limit almost nobody puts on a pricing page: your daily sending capacity is a property of your own carrier registration, not of the software you buy. Once your brand is registered for A2P 10DLC, T-Mobile applies a daily message cap per brand based on a third-party vetting score, and Bandwidth documents the default plainly: a new brand is assigned the Low tier, which caps it at 2,000 messages a day to T-Mobile. Vetting can move you to 10,000, 40,000, or 200,000, and a sole proprietor brand sits lower still. Switching platforms does not change this. If your peak day needs more than 2,000 T-Mobile messages, the question to ask a vendor is how they handle brand vetting, not how many texts their plan includes.
Then there is the reply. Every service in this category can receive an inbound text; on almost all of them a human then has to read and answer it. That is fine when your volume is low and expensive when it is not. MessageAgent puts one AI agent on the number: it answers the question, qualifies the lead, books the appointment, and escalates to a person with the full thread attached when judgment is actually required. Our pricing is flat and published at $79, $199, and $499 a month with the AI included, month to month, and carrier fees passed through at cost with no markup. 10DLC registration, STOP handling, and AI disclosure are part of setup rather than an add-on line item.
Side by side
Business texting services compared: how each one actually bills you
The column that matters is not the price, it is the billing unit, because these vendors charge in five different units and the same monthly volume produces very different invoices. Every figure below was read off the vendor pricing page on the date noted, and where a vendor does not publish something we say so rather than filling the gap.
| Platform | Published price | How messages are billed | Who answers an inbound text | Contract, carrier and 10DLC fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MessageAgent | $79, $199, $499 per month flat, AI included | By plan. No per-seat, per-message, or per-resolution charge | The AI answers, qualifies, books, and escalates to a person with the thread attached | Month to month. Carrier fees passed through at cost, 10DLC registration handled at setup |
| TextUs | Essential $99 per month, Pro $199 per month, Enterprise custom | Platform fee plus $0.02 per message credit. A long text uses 3 to 4 credits, MMS uses 3 | Your reps, in a shared inbox | 12 month minimum commitment, no month-to-month plans. 2 numbers on Essential, 5 on Pro, $29 per extra number |
| SlickText | $29 (500 credits) through $939 (50,000 credits), nine published tiers | Credits against a monthly allowance | Your team | Overage rate not published. Carrier fees acknowledged but not quantified. RCS setup $500 plus $200 a year |
| Textmagic | No plan fee, pay as you go | $0.049 per US SMS on a Textmagic number, or $0.01 per SMS routed through your own Twilio, Vonage, Sinch or Bandwidth account | Your team | Dedicated number $10 per month. 10DLC campaign $10 per month, first registration free |
| Textline | Not published. Essentials, Pro and Enterprise are quote only | Included credits (600 on Essentials, 2,000 on Pro), then add-on credits at $0.03 or backup credits at $0.04 | Your agents, with rules and auto replies in front of them | 10DLC campaign fee $15 per month. Toll-free numbers carry no monthly registration fee |
| SimpleTexting | About $39 per month, billed yearly at $398.40 | 500 included credits, then 5.5 cents per extra credit | Your team | One of the few publishing both: $4 one-time carrier registration and roughly $0.0025 per US message in carrier fees. Local number $10 per month. Checked August 12, 2026 |
| EZ Texting | Launch $25, Boost $75, Scale $125, Enterprise $3,000 | 500 credits on Launch, Boost and Scale alike, then overage at $0.04, $0.035 and $0.03 | Your team | A2P registration included. $5 per month telecom fee on Launch only. Checked August 12, 2026 |
| Twilio | No plan fee, pay as you go | $0.0083 per outbound 160-character segment. Every segment bills, there is no allowance | Nothing. Twilio is an API, you build the product | Carrier fees listed separately: $0.0035 per AT&T long code message, $0.0045 T-Mobile. Checked August 12, 2026 |
| Podium | Not published. Sales call only | Not disclosed. Bulk message credits exist but allowances are not shown | Your team, with an AI Employee add-on | A base 10DLC fee is referenced on the pricing page but not quantified |
TextUs, SlickText, Textmagic, Textline and Podium figures were read off each vendor pricing page on August 15, 2026. SimpleTexting, EZ Texting and Twilio figures are from our August 12, 2026 check. Textline and Podium do not publish a plan price, so none is quoted for them. All names are trademarks of their respective owners and appear here for comparison only.
What you get
Everything one AI agent handles
The billing unit is the whole decision
Per seat, per credit, per segment, per message on top of a platform fee, or flat. Five different units across one category, which is why comparing headline prices tells you almost nothing. Take your realistic monthly send volume and your realistic inbound volume, run both through each vendor formula, and the ranking usually rearranges itself.
Your daily cap comes from carrier vetting, not your plan
T-Mobile caps 10DLC traffic per brand per day by vetting tier, and a newly registered brand defaults to the Low tier at 2,000 messages a day. Third-party vetting can lift that to 10,000, 40,000, or 200,000. No software purchase changes it, so ask a vendor how they handle brand vetting before you ask what their plan includes.
Somebody still has to answer the text
Two-way texting is sold as a feature, but on nearly every platform in the table the second way is a person on your team reading an inbox. That works until inbound outgrows your staffing. Our AI answers the reply itself, checks real availability to book, and hands the conversation to a human with full context when it genuinely needs one.
Write to 160 characters and halve the bill
US carriers bill SMS in 160-character segments. Add a business name, a link, and a STOP notice and most templates drift just past the line, so every send bills twice. A single emoji or curly quote is worse: it switches the message to Unicode encoding and drops the limit to 70 characters.
10DLC and TCPA handled at setup, not billed later
Any business texting US numbers from a 10-digit number has to register a brand and a campaign with the carriers, and Twilio is explicit that unregistered senders face additional carrier fees and heavier filtering. We register you as part of onboarding, honor STOP instantly, identify your business, and disclose the AI.
One thread, six channels, one AI brain
A customer who texted you on Monday and sent an Instagram DM on Thursday is one person with one history. SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, web chat, and email all run off a single agent with shared memory, so nobody has to ask what the conversation was about.
Conversation Console
Try it on every channel
Pick a channel and a sample customer message, and watch the same AI agent reply on brand, take the action, log it to the CRM, and hand off to a human in one tap.
Tap a customer message above. The same AI agent replies on , in your brand's voice.
- Intent
- Action
- CRM
Handed to a human teammate
They pick up with the full conversation and context carried over. No dead ends, no repeating.
Sample conversation, not customer data.
Common questions
Business texting service questions
What is a business texting service?
A business texting service lets a company send and receive SMS from a shared business number rather than an employee phone. It adds a team inbox, contact history, templates, scheduled and automated sends, reporting, and the A2P 10DLC carrier registration US businesses need for reliable delivery. The meaningful differences between vendors are how they bill and whether anything answers inbound messages automatically.
How much does a business texting service cost?
Entry plans run roughly $25 to $99 a month, but the plan fee is rarely the whole bill. TextUs adds $0.02 per message on a 12 month commitment, Textmagic charges $0.049 per US SMS with no plan fee, EZ Texting overage runs $0.03 to $0.04, and SimpleTexting charges 5.5 cents. Add carrier pass-through fees and a 10DLC campaign fee of $10 to $15 a month. MessageAgent is flat at $79, $199, or $499.
What is the best contractor texting platform?
For a contractor, the deciding features are not the same as for a retailer. A contractor texting platform needs to catch the missed call from a job site, reply while you are on a roof or under a sink, send appointment and arrival-window reminders, and register your number for A2P 10DLC so estimates actually get delivered. Prioritize automatic inbound answering and reminders over campaign blasting, and check whether the plan meters messages.
What is two-way texting?
Two-way texting means customers can reply to your business number and their reply reaches you, instead of arriving at a no-reply number that discards it. Almost every business texting platform supports it. What varies is what happens next: on most tools the reply waits in an inbox for a human, and on a few it is read and answered automatically.
How many texts can a business send per day?
It depends on your carrier registration, not your software plan. T-Mobile applies a daily cap per registered brand by vetting tier: 200,000 at the top, then 40,000, 10,000, and 2,000 at the Low tier, which is where new brands are assigned by default. Sole proprietor brands sit lower. Third-party vetting is what moves you up.
Do I need 10DLC registration for business texting?
Yes, if you are texting US numbers from a standard 10-digit business number. Twilio states that anyone sending application-to-person messages over a 10DLC number to the US must register, and that unregistered senders incur additional carrier fees and heavier filtering. Registration means a brand record identifying your business and a campaign record describing what you send.
What is the best business texting service for small business?
It depends on whether your problem is sending or answering. If you mostly broadcast and your team can handle the replies, a credit-based tool like SlickText or EZ Texting is inexpensive and sufficient. If inbound texts arrive faster than anyone can answer them, or outside business hours, you want a service where the AI handles the reply, and that is where MessageAgent fits.
Is business texting legal in the US?
Yes, with consent and disclosure. The TCPA governs it: you need the right level of consent for the kind of message you are sending, marketing needs more than transactional, you have to identify your business, honor STOP immediately and permanently, and keep to reasonable hours. Mixing a promotion into a transactional message changes what kind of message it is and what consent it required.
Can I text customers from my existing business phone number?
Usually yes. Most business texting services can text-enable an existing landline or VoIP number so your published number keeps working for calls while also receiving SMS. The number still has to be registered for 10DLC. Text-enabling is generally preferable to buying a new number, because customers already have the old one saved.
What is the difference between a business texting service and SMS marketing software?
Direction and consent. SMS marketing software is built to broadcast promotions to a subscribed list and is measured on opt-in growth and conversion. A business texting service is built for conversations with individual customers about their order, appointment, or question. Marketing messages require stricter consent, and mixing the two in one number is how businesses get complaints and carrier filtering.
Why do my business texts not get delivered?
Three usual causes. The brand or campaign is not registered for 10DLC, so carriers filter the traffic. You have hit your brand daily cap, which is 2,000 messages to T-Mobile for an unvetted brand. Or the message content itself trips filters, most often a shortened public link, all-caps promotional language, or a missing opt-out. Registration fixes the first, vetting the second, and rewriting the template the third.
How long does 10DLC registration take?
Brand registration is usually same day to a couple of days once your legal business name, EIN, and address match your public records exactly. Campaign approval takes longer and is where most delays happen, because carriers review your sample messages, opt-in language, and opt-out handling. Budget a week, and expect a rejection if the EIN details do not match precisely.
Does a business texting service work with WhatsApp and Instagram?
Rarely in one product. Most US business texting services are SMS and MMS only, and treat WhatsApp or social DMs as a separate product if they support them at all. MessageAgent runs SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram DM, Facebook Messenger, web chat, and email through one agent with shared memory, so the same customer is one conversation regardless of where they started it.
Put one AI on every channel today
One agent that answers, qualifies, books, and upsells across every channel, in one inbox.
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