The Top 10 SMS Marketing Platforms of 2023

Even though social media and other channels have become popular, SMS marketing remains an effective way to reach your customers and build lasting relationships with them.

Unlike email marketing, with an open rate of 20%, the open rate for SMS can be as high as 98%. Additionally, its click-through rate is 9.18% higher than other channels.

Despite this, many business owners and marketers ignore SMS marketing, focusing on other channels instead.

As a result, their missing opportunities to build connections with their customer base as well as sales.

If you’re looking to integrate SMS marketing into your business and are looking for the right solution for your needs, you’ve come to the right place.

In this guide, we’ll look at the top 10 SMS marketing platforms, so you can decide which will help you achieve your goals.

Let’s dive right in!

What is SMS marketing?

SMS marketing is a form of marketing where promotional and transactional messages are sent to customers via text to their mobile phones.

With these messages, you can send updates, alerts, or offers to people that have consented to receive your messages and are interested in your brand or products.

Using SMS marketing software, you can create custom messages and send them in bulk to your list of phone numbers, and can be used for transactional, informational, and promotional messages.

You can use SMS marketing software for:

• Abandoned cart recovery
• Sending promotions, discounts, or free gifts
• Maintaining your contacts
• Scheduling messages
• Generating reports
• Improving customer service

Benefits of SMS marketing

There’ are several benefits that SMS marketing has over other channels. Let’s look at them now.

Quick & Easy

This benefit has two sides to it.

First, unlike with social media and email, unless you’re sending MMS messages, you don’t need to create images to go with them.

And because the character limit is so short, you don’t need to write a lot of copy.

This means creating and sending your messages is quick & easy.

Additionally, your messages are seen sooner than social media or email messages, being read on average within 90 seconds of being received.

Amazing Open and Click-Through Rates

As mentioned previously, the open rate for SMS messages is 98%, and their CTR rates are 9.18% higher than other digital marketing channels. No other channel comes close to these numbers!

Measurable

With your SMS marketing platform, you can measure the performance of your campaigns by tracking metrics such as the total number of messages sent, opened, and answered to build your reports and optimize your campaigns.

Cost-Effective

Using bulk messaging, you can send messages to a large number of customers cost-effectively.

You’ll also save on costs associated with running other digital campaigns, such as time spent on the conceptualization and creation of your digital assets.

Now that you have a better understanding of SMS marketing and its benefits let’s look at some of the best SMS marketing platforms you can use in 2023.

1. Winback

Okay, you probably think I’m a little biased for this one, and you’d be partially correct.

But I really believe that Winback should be at the top of the list of best SMS marketing platforms for one simple reason: Thanks to proactive list-cleaning and account reviews, it helps you make $35 in sales for every $1 you spend.

Which other platform can say that!?

This is because Winback is an SMS marketing service that lets you send regular text message marketing campaigns, but also includes other features like abandoned cart and browser recovery, shipping and restock notifications, and winback campaigns.

You can also turn existing customers into repeat customers with post-purchase upsell messages, answer client questions via two-way communication using email or the Shopify app, and use SMS shortcodes to get more subscribers for your marketing campaigns.

Supporting all countries and with a one-click, no–code install, Winback is the best SMS marketing software for Shopify stores.

Winback offers a fully-featured free plan that comes with 50 credits to get you started, but for $59 per month, you get 3500 credits to use for your SMS marketing campaigns.

2. TextMagic

TextMagic is a text message marketing service that scales with your business and allows you to send notifications, alerts, reminders, confirmations, and SMS marketing campaigns.

Features include online text sending to stay in touch with customers and staff, online bulk SMS sending to reach large volumes of customers cost-effectively, an email to SMS gateway that converts your emails into text messages, and dedicated virtual phone numbers that let customers text you without you having to text them first.

Other features include the ability to schedule text messages to be sent when needed, create text marketing lists to segment your contacts, support for MMS messages and SMS attachments, and SMS surveys for collecting feedback.

TextMagic offers a simple pricing model with no hidden fees that only requires a free account and the loading of pre-paid credits to send SMS campaigns to over 190 countries.

3. Exploring SMS Marketing Platforms: A Closer Look at Sendinblue’s Features and Benefits

Sendinblue is a marketing platform that features marketing automation, a CRM, email marketing, and SMS marketing in one package.

Its SMS marketing platform lets you connect directly with your contacts using targeted SMS messages.

With Sendinblue, you can send bulk SMS marketing campaigns to a contact list from your database.

It also lets you send transactional SMS for order confirmations, shipping updates, and more using their API, marketing automation, or one of their plugins.

Other features include personalized SMS messages using segmentation and dynamically adding individual contact attributes such as first or last name, company name, or other information one has, as well as performance monitoring of SMS campaigns using key engagement metrics to know what works and what one can improve.

Sendinblue offers free, lite, premium, and enterprise plans, while SMS credits can be bought on a pay-as-you-go basis.

4. Diving into SMS Marketing Platforms: Unveiling the Power of SlickText for Business Growth

SlickText allows you to create valuable connections with your customers through targeted, action-driving text messages.

Features include list growth tools such as text to join your marketing lists, QR code opt-in, and website popups, subscriber engagement tools such as personalized, mass text messages, two-way messaging, and text surveys, and automations such as workflows, drip campaigns, and auto-replies.

Other features include contact management solutions such as contact segmentation, age verification, and self-cleaning subscriber lists; integrations with Shopify and Zapier; analytics; and account management tools.

While it offers a free 14-day trial with 50 text messages, paid plans start at $29 per month for 500 texts per month and can be scaled as needed.

5. Klaviyo

Klaviyo helps you turn your data into dollars, with personalized and automated messages that get shoppers to buy.

It provides multiple ways for people to sign up for marketing messages, including multi-step forms, click-to-text web forms, click-to-text email banners, and consent at checkout.

It also allows you to automatically send personalized texts to your shoppers, such as browser and cart abandonments, price drop alerts, and in-stock alerts. Other features include list segmentation, two-way SMS communication, support for toll-free and shortcodes, and over 200 integrations.

Klaviyo offers a free plan that supports up to 50 SMS contacts, and 150 SMS sends, along with email support and a toll-free number. Paid plans start at $5 and scale with the size of your contact list and SMS requirements.

6. Omnisend

Omnisend is a marketing automation platform that combines email and SMS marketing, allowing you to streamline your marketing workflows and align your messaging.

While its top feature is the integration of SMS and email marketing, Omnisend also features SMS support for all countries, SMS workflows to automate your marketing efforts, and SMS channel reports to help you make data-driven decisions.

Omnisend also includes list-building tools to help you collect your visitors’ contact details via tools such as pop-ups, landing pages, wheel of fortune, and signup boxes.

Omnisend offers three pricing plans: Free, Standard, and Pro. Standard costs $16 and shares the same features as the free plan, including a maximum of 60 SMS messages per month.

The Pro plan costs $59 per month and gives you 3,933 SMS messages per month along with advanced reporting.

7. EZTexting

EZTexting is an all-in-one SMS marketing solution that helps users streamline their customer communications.

Its features include contact management and segmentation tools, text messaging tools such as group texting, two-way communication, and picture texts, and list growth tools like QR codes, sign-up forms, and keywords.

It also features a variety of text campaigns such as drip campaigns, automations, and recurring texts, advanced analytics and reporting, an API and integrations, plus design templates and support for all types of SMS numbers.

It doesn’t offer a free plan, with paid plans starting at $24 per month, or $19 per month when paid annually. This plan includes SMS text notifications and alerts, with one number. For additional features, such as MMS support, list growth tools, or API access, more advanced plans are required.

8. ClickSend

ClickSend lets you send marketing SMS messages through its web-based SMS portal or transactional SMS messages via its SMS Gateway API. The ClickSend Web to SMS service lets you easily thousands of messages anywhere in the world.

It also features an email to SMS gateway, an Outlook SMS plugin, and support for bulk text messages. Other features include a voice gateway for text-to-speech voice calls, a fax gateway, and online post to send letters and postcards online.

Apart from SMS marketing messages, ClickSend also supports MMS messages, rich messaging channels such as RCS and WhatsApp, and a variety of integrations to extend its functionalities.

With no setup fees, contracts, or monthly fees, pricing for fewer than 2,000 US messages per month is $0.0251 per SMS, with the price dropping the more messages you send.

9. Drip

Drip lets you easily set up revenue-boosting email and SMS workflows that run themselves, helping you make more money.

It includes pre-built workflows designed to help you build relationships with your customers such as a welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, post-purchase messages, win-back campaigns, and birthday messages.

Its point-and-click visual workflow builder lets you easily automate personalized, pre-scheduled text messages. Using customer data, Drip lets you create content tailored for your customers while syncing with Facebook Custom Audiences helps you build your brand recognition and grow your lists.

Other features include list growth tools like forms & popups, email marketing tools, detailed insights, and analytics, as well as support for a variety of integrations.

Drip boasts no hidden fees or charges – pricing is based on the number of email contacts you have and SMS you send. While it does offer a 14-day free trial, for full access, you’ll need a paid plan, which starts at $58 for up to 500 email contacts, 1,500 SMS contacts, and 3,499 SMS sends.

10. SimpleTexting

SimpleTexting makes it easy, fast, and affordable to send SMS marketing campaigns or engage in 1-on-1 conversations with customers. It supports a variety of numbers such as toll-free, landline, and shortcodes, and features list growth tools like keywords and web forms.

Its teammate support lets you assign additional users to your lists, and gives you the option to assign each new user their own phone number, while multi-number support allows you to add multiple phone numbers to one account.

Featuring a host of integrations, SimpleText also features automations such as birthday texts, autoresponders, and recurring campaigns. Other features include support for extended messaging that gives you 306 characters per message, MMS support, and advanced analytics.

SimpleText also helps you grow your audience and collect feedback via Text to Win campaigns, Text to Vote Surveys, and subscriber polls. The SimpleText mobile app supports both iOS and Android and gives you access to all features on the go.

Paid plans start at $29 per month and include 500 SMS credits, free incoming SMS messages, unlimited contacts, a free unique number, unlimited keywords, and credits that roll over.

Related Content

• Experts Weigh in on SMS Marketing for Small Businesses
• 5 Postscript Alternatives for SMS Marketing
• What are Transactional SMS Messages?
• How to Lower Your Cart Abandonment Rate in Shopify

Wrapping Up

There you have it, the top 10 SMS marking platforms. Of course, you could save a lot of time and just go with Winback from the start. We help Shopify stores recover abandoned carts with the power of SMS. Sign up for a free account now.

Topics: SMS Marketing