If you have a small business, SMS is one of the best ways to keep in contact with your customers. For things like order confirmations, booking reminders, special offers, and updates, texts work better than email—because people actually read them.

Of course, you can't just grab your smartphone and start sending messages; you run a business. SMS marketing apps let you message customers directly, or automate the whole process, so they get sent a text based on your booking calendar, marketing list, or other integrated app. Best of all, your customers can even text you straight back.

I've been covering technology for more than 10 years, and I've been responsible for updating this list for the past six years, with a little help from other Zapier app testers. In that time, I've deeply researched and tested several dozen of the top SMS apps for small businesses. Based on all those experiences, here are my picks for the best SMS marketing tools.

The 7 best SMS apps for small businesses

• SimpleTexting for easy-to-run SMS marketing campaigns

• TextMagic for quickly sending texts from an SMS service

• SlickText for collecting phone numbers and advanced marketing

• Sakari for outgoing SMS marketing

• Salesmsg for small, local businesses using SMS

• EZ Texting for non-technical people who want guidance on SMS marketing

• Twilio for customizing your SMS marketing

What makes a great SMS app?

Are you more likely to read a text message or an email? The numbers don't lie: text message open rates are massively higher than email open rates. Texts are also a super convenient way for your customers to reply. Smartphone messaging apps are quick, easy to use, and fit into day-to-day life, while email is, to be honest, generally awful. 

SMS marketing is a huge business around the world, so there are dozens of different SMS marketing platforms available. Most of them, however, aren't really appropriate for small businesses. Many of these apps are designed for enterprise companies, political campaigns, and other groups looking to send thousands of SMS messages a day as part of a marketing campaign, rather than smaller businesses that want to maintain a more personal relationship with their customers. Similarly, a lot of "apps" are actually API services that developers can use to add SMS functionality to their own projects, rather than a service you can sign up for and use straight away. 

To cut through the huge range of options, I set five key criteria that I was looking for in SMS apps:

• Easy to use for regular people. Setting up an SMS app for your business shouldn't require hiring a specialist marketing agency. There are plenty of great apps that can plug into whatever existing setup you have, without you needing a huge amount of technical knowledge. Some of the apps—and especially the API services—just weren't user-friendly enough to recommend. Yes, you might need to read through the help documents or ask the support team a question or two, but all of my picks are easy to get started with. In practice, this means that almost all the apps on the list have a dedicated web app you can log in to and use to send and receive messages. A lot of them also have the ability to send and receive text messages through your email client or with mobile apps.  

• Capable of true two-way messaging, so you can have a conversation with your customers. This isn't a list of marketing SMS apps that can send 100,000 text messages with the click of a button. These are all apps for small businesses that want a way to directly communicate with their customers. This means proper two-way communication—just like when you're texting a friend—was essential for inclusion. You can still automate responses, collect survey data, and schedule texts with many of them.

• Able to integrate with other apps and services, so you can automate things like reservation reminders. Integrations with other apps and services were a must. This means that, in addition to texting your customers directly, you can also (for example) have your online ordering service automatically confirm when an order is placed or ready for collection, and follow up with a customer satisfaction survey.

• Affordable with low-volume requirements, so small businesses can get started. When it comes to sending SMS messages to your customers, pricing matters. I required all the SMS services on this list to be affordable for small businesses. This meant no high monthly pricing or large volume requirements. Instead, all the services are either pay-as-you-go or have low-volume, low-fee monthly plans. 

• Able to scale as needed. Being locked into a plan that's too small for your holiday marketing push isn't good either. All these services also had to allow you to scale up your SMS campaigns without charging ridiculous fees or forcing you to jump up to a much more expensive tier.

This means this isn't a list of multi-channel marketing apps designed to send thousands of texts at once—though some of the apps I chose can do that. Similarly, this isn't a list of universal customer support inboxes or live chat apps. These are apps that make it easy to send SMS messages to (and receive them from) your customers.

Note that, as of August 2023, businesses sending texts to customers in the US need to register with The Campaign Registry. Phone numbers that aren't registered are likely to be blocked by carriers, meaning all the companies on this list have taken measures to ensure compliance—some require you to fill out a form, while others handle the registration for you.

I checked out every SMS message app I could find, testing all the ones that appeared to meet these criteria. I signed up for whatever free trial was available and got straight into texting. As mentioned above, I was particularly concerned about the experience of directly communicating with customers, so I paid a lot of attention to how easy it was to do. I also tested receiving texts—which involved a lot of me pretending to have conversations with myself—and explored any automation and integration features.

Now, onto the apps.

The best SMS apps at a glance

Best SMS app for easy-to-run marketing campaigns

SimpleTexting

SimpleTexting pros:

• Makes setting up a marketing list very easy 

• Built-in apps and integrations allow you to run surveys and competitions and automate everything 

SimpleTexting cons:

• Sending individual messages is possible but not intuitive

SimpleTexting is the best option if you're looking to run marketing campaigns quickly. Like TextMagic, the user interface is intuitive, with everything accessible from the main screen—I didn't even need to view any tutorials to grasp how things worked. SimpleTexting doesn't require you to fill out a registration form for The Campaign Registry—the company claims it registers your number on your behalf after you sign up.

While you can contact customers directly, SimpleTexting is more focused on easy-to-run marketing campaigns, where you text the same message to everyone on a list. Go to the Campaigns tab, click New, give it a name, and you're ready to start marketing to your customers.

To get new prospects on your list, set up a keyword in the Keywords tab. For example, potential customers can text SAUSAGE to 555888 and get put on your Sausage and Hot Dog Deals list. As soon as they join, an autoresponder can immediately text them with a discount code and ask them if they want more information. If they do, it can respond with another text. With SimpleTexting's built-in apps available in the Apps tab, you can also conduct more technical marketing efforts like running surveys, polls, and sweepstakes.

Of course, for any marketing effort, you need analytics. SimpleTexting's Analytics tab offers detailed breakdowns of how your campaigns are going with information like the number of new subscribers, what keyword they're using to join, how many autoresponders have triggered, how many people have unsubscribed, and what responses you've been sent.

And there are lots of other nice features too. You can configure an away message in case a customer texts you when you're closed, and the cheapest plan comes with three user seats so you can collaborate with your team. You can leave notes on conversations or assign them to your teammates. All in all, it just checks a lot of boxes.

SimpleTexting also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically add people to your Sausage and Hot Dog Deals list from Facebook lead ads or anywhere else you get your leads.

SimpleTexting price: From $39/month for 500 credits (enough for 500 short texts). Additional credits cost $0.055 on the entry plan; there are higher volume plans if you need to send more texts.

Best SMS app for quickly sending texts

TextMagic

TextMagic pros:

• The web app is very intuitive and easy to use 

• Pay-as-you-go pricing means you aren't locked into a plan 

TextMagic cons:

• Automation features aren't as advanced as some of the other picks

Once upon a time you could sign up for TextMagic and start sending messages. That's not true anymore—now you need to go through a process to register your marketing campaign with The Campaign Registry before you can send any texts, and there's no way to skip that step. This was the longest process of any I tested, though that might be a good thing: they're really working to keep spammers off of their platform. 

And after setting up, you can send messages easily. Unlike other apps, which open up to a dashboard cluttered with widgets and options, TextMagic takes you straight to what you want to do: send a text.

But that doesn't mean that TextMagic isn't functional or powerful. You can send messages from TextMagic's number so replies go to the API, web app, or your email; or from your own mobile number so replies go directly to your phone. You can build contact lists by importing an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file, manually entering them in the Contacts tab of the app, saving the number of anyone who texts you, or using a click-to-text form on your website.

In the Scheduled tab, you can schedule messages, for example, to send out a Friday Specials text every week. You can also set up templates in the Templates tab to make it faster to send recurring messages—like appointment confirmations—and automate responses to customer texts. And of course, you can quickly and easily send customers a text from the web or the iOS and Android apps.

Really, TextMagic hits that sweet spot of being both a joy to use and powerful enough for almost anything a small business needs. And even better, text credits are entirely pay-as-you-go, so you're not locked into an expensive ongoing contract. You prepay for credit, pay $10/month for a virtual number, and then just send texts—which start at $0.04—as much or as little as you need.

You can also connect TextMagic to thousands of organizational tools, scheduling calendars, and other apps through Zapier, so you can do things like automatically follow up with leads. Here are some examples, but you can connect TextMagic to thousands of other apps using Zapier.

TextMagic price: Pay-as-you-go starts at $0.04/text sent; dedicated virtual numbers from $10/month.

Best SMS app for collecting phone numbers and advanced marketing

SlickText

SlickText pros:

• Opt-in web forms and pop-ups make it super easy to collect phone numbers through your website or social media accounts, plus you can use it to run a loyalty program

• Solid onboarding and helpful hints throughout the app make it easy to get started no matter how technical you are 

SlickText cons:

• Advanced features like workflows are pretty expensive

SlickText is the most marketing-focused app on this list—and it almost didn't make the cut because of it. It's more suited for collecting phone numbers and sending mass marketing messages than for chatting one-on-one with your existing customers.

With that said, if you're looking for an SMS app that makes it easy to collect phone numbers in a variety of different ways and to run marketing campaigns by texting them, it's one of the best options out there. The onboarding is quick and comprehensive, with a wizard that asks you what industry you're in, and it guides you through relevant features. The free trial is notably less restricted than others in this list—you can send a message to any number, so long as you check a box stating that you asked for permission before sending.

The tutorials introduce SlickText's best feature: its Marketing Tools. Here you'll find easy-to-set-up opt-in web forms, website pop-ups, text surveys, automatic opt-in links, coupons, contests, promo codes, loyalty programs, and more—along with helpful hints on how to use them. I was most impressed by how nice the default templates looked. For example, you can get a good-looking pop-up on your website ready to collect phone numbers in just a few minutes, which is more than can be said for a lot of other SMS marketing apps. 

It's the same for all of SlickText's other marketing tools—they're just good. Really, it's surprising how much functionality is tucked away in one section of the app when the rest of it is a bit barebones. 

Messaging your marketing lists is simple too. You go to Send a Message, select the list you want to target, enter your text message, and hit send. (You can also schedule it for some time in the future, or set it to send regularly, like on Fridays or the last day of the month.)

Alternatively, you can integrate SlickText with Zapier so that anyone who fills in a form, abandons their cart, or takes any other sort of action gets a text. Here are a couple examples.

On higher priced plans, SlickText also has its own Workflows that allow you to further automate your SMS marketing plans. 

SlickText price: From $29/month for 500 texts and 2 textwords; from $139/month for automated workflows. 

Best SMS app for outgoing text messages

Sakari

Sakari pros:

• Super affordable for outbound text messages 

• Solid pricing combined with its integration with Zapier makes it a great option for automating your SMS workflow behind the scenes

Sakari cons:

• You have to pay for inbound messages

• You can't sign up with an @gmail.com account

If you mostly plan to send outgoing text messages to your customers, like booking confirmations, delivery notifications, and other similar texts, Sakari is one of the best options—and could save you some money. 

Like all the apps on this list, Sakari is a fully-featured SMS messaging app with a great web app. When you log in, you're able to send a message straight away, but only to people who have specifically opted in to get messages from you—anyone can opt in by sending a message to your Sakari number along with the word start. This changes when you leave the free trial, start paying for the service, and register with The Campaign Registry: you'll be able to text normally after that.

From the left sidebar, you can see your Conversations with customers, create marketing campaigns in the Campaigns tab, integrate things with apps like Zapier in the Integrations tab, and generally do everything you'd want with an SMS messaging app. 

What sets Sakari apart is the pricing. It starts at $16/month for 500 SMS messages sent or received. That's $9 cheaper than with TextMagic (which would be $25 to send 500 messages), but with it, inbound messages are free. Additional messages start at $0.032 compared to TextMagic's $0.04, and the differences are more extreme with greater volume. 

Say you run a delivery takeaway service and send 6,000 texts per month but only receive 250 replies from customers. With Sakari, you could hop on the $170/month Team plan, which includes 6,250 SMS messages, whereas with TextMagic, you'd have to pay $240—$0.04 for every text you send, and nothing for every one you receive.

This is especially handy if you want to use Sakari and Zapier to integrate with other apps for outgoing messages, so you can do things like automatically message contacts you add to a Google Sheet or instantly send an email based on a message. 

Sakari price: From $16/month for the Starter plan with 500 messages sent or received, including one free number; additional SMS messages from $0.032.

Best SMS app for small, local businesses

Salesmsg

Salesmsg pros:

• Allows you to get a local number wherever you are in the U.S. or Canada 

• Integrates with HubSpot, Pipedrive, and other CRMs

Salesmsg cons:

• Web app is a bit simplistic

• Free trial requires a credit card number

Salesmsg is a great option for U.S.- or Canada-based small businesses—unfortunately, it's not available internationally beyond that.

Salesmsg has one of the most basic web apps of any of the services on this list. There are only a few tabs in the sidebar: Conversations, Contacts, Broadcasts, Triggers, Analytics, and Keywords. If you want more power from Salesmsg, you'll need to integrate it with other apps—though the service is still beta testing a Workflows automation feature (I haven't tested it yet).

As soon as you sign up for Salesmsg, you're prompted to create a local number. This is the number that all your texts will appear to come from, and you can assign a separate number for each team member. You'll also be asked if you want to start the compliance process, though you can test the application during your free trial without doing this. 

If you want, you can also enable call forwarding, so if a customer calls your text number, they'll get forwarded to your personal or business phone, or just answer calls using the web app. (Testing this was kind of silly as the calls were being routed through VoIP servers all over the world for my voice to travel six inches.)

Salesmsg integrates with CRM platforms like HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zoho, so you can use your CRM of choice and have Salesmsg automatically handle the text messaging. You can also use its triggers to create a webhook that you can use to send specific kinds of messages like appointment reminders. Or you can use Zapier to connect Salesmsg to any service you want—here are some examples.

Despite the simple web app, Salesmsg has a lot of power.

Salesmsg price: From $25/month for 500 text messages and a single phone number. Additional messages are $0.04; additional numbers are $10/month. High volume customers can save a little, per text, by opting for a higher priced tier.

Best SMS app for non-technical people who want some guidance

EZ Texting

EZ Texting pros:

• Some of the best onboarding and help docs for non-technical business owners 

• Customer service available and happy to help 

EZ Texting cons:

• All the hand-holding can be annoying if you know what you want to do

EZ Texting doesn't do much that the other apps don't: you can text your customers as a group or 1-on-1 from the Inbox; you can set up various kinds of marketing campaigns from the Campaigns tab; and you can view reports in the Reporting tab. What makes it stand out, though, is that at every step, EZ Texting makes it very clear what to do. And if you get stuck, there's the Getting Started Kit and informative help docs to sort you out.

Sign up for a free trial, and you can test all features, with the rather large caveat that you can only text your own phone number until you start paying. It's enough, though, to get a feel for how the app works. The dashboard after you log in has large, friendly buttons for group texts, conversations, automated drip campaigns, keywords, and sign-up forms.  

Click any of these buttons and there are clear instructions on how to use it and, in the case of things like templates, working examples. If you aren't really comfortable with new apps, it's hard to beat this level of instruction. And, as the signup emails will keep reminding you, you can always schedule a call with one of their team members if you need more help.

EZ Texting doesn't oversimplify a complex product—it just makes it very accessible. It's as powerful as any others on this list. You can even use EZ Texting's Zapier integrations to connect it to any of the other apps you use in your business.

EZ Texting price: From $25/month for 500 text messages and one textable number.

Best SMS app for customization

Twilio

Twilio pros:

• Completely flexible and customizable for any use case 

• No-code features and integration with Zapier now makes it accessible for non-developers

Twilio cons:

• A lot more effort to set up than any of the other apps on this list 

• Only a backend 

You might be here because you're looking for a Twilio alternative, but hear me out. Twilio, unlike the other SMS software on this list, is a blank canvas. It offers a range of APIs, so companies can build SMS messaging, phone number redirection, and dozens of similar features into their own apps and services to do whatever they want. Uber, Airbnb, and Netflix are just a few of the companies that use it behind the scenes. 

And while Twilio is mostly aimed at developers, you don't actually need to be one to use it—there are enough no-code features that most people with some general technical knowledge can get by. Instead of building your own apps, for example, you can use services like Zapier, HubSpot, and Zoho CRM to connect to Twilio's API directly, without the need for you to do much, if any, coding. You generally just have to find out which bits you need to copy-and-paste to where. 

For example, by connecting your Twilio account to your Zapier account, you'll be able to send and receive text messages using your email account or collect texts in Slack or a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Learn more about how to automate Twilio, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Or you can dig deeper into Twilio's other features, like Studio and CodeExchange, that help non-developers build their own apps. Plus, for most use cases, Twilio should work out cheaper than the other SMS marketing services if you're prepared to do the work to get it up and running.

Twilio price: Since Twilio is more of a platform than an app, its pricing is a little different from the others on this list. Text messages start at $0.0079/message sent and received—although there's an additional carrier fee of around $0.003/text on messages you send. Dedicated phone numbers start at $1.15/month.

Related reading:

• How two-way SMS marketing can grow your business

• How to get the most out of SMS messaging with automation

• 8 ways businesses succeed by texting customers

This article was originally published in June 2019. The most recent update, with contributions from Justin Pot, was in February 2024.