SMS customer service software costs about $90 to $335 a month for a five-agent support team texting 3,000 messages a month, before the help desk you may already pay for. The spread comes from the billing unit, not the features: some vendors charge per account with unlimited users, some charge per agent seat, and help desks bill texting as a per-segment add-on. Carrier registration (10DLC) adds about $61 once and $10 a month on top.
We read the pricing page of 23 texting, help desk and messaging vendors on October 5, 2026. Eighteen publish a usable US price. Five publish nothing, and for those we say so rather than repeat a figure from a software directory. Every rate below is the vendor's own number on that date.
Which SMS customer service vendors publish a price?
Most dedicated business texting tools publish a price, most help desks bury texting inside an add-on, and the raw messaging carriers publish everything down to the fraction of a cent. The table groups them that way, because the three groups bill you for different things.
| Vendor | Published price (checked 2026-10-05) | Billing unit | Messages included and overage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text Request | Basic $59.99, Starter $145, Corporate $295, Enterprise $575 per month | Per account (one text line), unlimited users | 1,000 / 2,500 / 6,500 / 20,000 texts; extra $0.058 to $0.032 |
| Sakari | From $25 per month for 823 segments | Per account, unlimited users | About $0.0304 per segment; MMS $0.02 more |
| SimpleTexting | $39 per month, or $29 billed yearly, for 500 credits | Per account, 3 users included, extra user $20 | Extra credits $0.055; $4 one-time carrier registration; carrier fees passed through at cost |
| EZ Texting | Launch $25, Boost $75, Scale $125 per month ($20, $60, $100 annually); Enterprise from $3,000 | Per account, 1 user | 500 credits; overage $0.04 to $0.03; carrier fees billed separately |
| SlickText | From $29 per month for 500 credits up to $939 for 50,000 | Per account | Incoming texts free; MMS uses 3 credits; carrier fees passed through |
| Textmagic | Pay as you go, $0.049 per SMS | Per message | Local or toll-free number $10 per month |
| TextUs | Pro $299 per month | Per account, 5 numbers | 5,000 messages; extra $0.02; extra number $49; no setup fee |
| Salesmsg | Basic $25 per month ($21 billed yearly) | Per account | 500 credits a month; extra seat $10, extra number $5 |
| MessageDesk | Team $39 per user ($29 billed annually), 3-user minimum; Pro $99 ($79) | Per user | Broadcast product meters $0.05 per credit |
| Heymarket | Standard $49, Plus $99, Pro $199 per user per month, billed annually | Per user, 2-user minimum | Credits $0.03; MMS 2 credits |
| Quo (formerly OpenPhone) | Starter $19, Business $33, Scale $47 per user ($15, $23, $35 annually) | Per user | US and Canada texting unlimited under fair use; registration $19.50 once plus $1.50 to $3 a month |
| Beetexting | Basic $49.99 (1 user), Professional $89.97 | Per account plus extra user $39.99 | Messaging and carrier fees extra, not published |
| Textline | No plan price published. Essentials and Pro list included credits only | Per account, 3 or 5 agents | 600 or 2,000 credits; extra $0.03 prepaid, $0.04 auto backup; $15 monthly 10DLC campaign fee |
| Zendesk | Texting requires a Suite plan (Team $55, Professional $115 per agent, annual) | Per agent, plus usage | Local number $1, toll-free $2 a month; about $0.009 per US segment in or out |
| HubSpot | SMS add-on $75 per month | Add-on to Sales or Service Hub | 1,000 segments, one 10DLC number and registration included; extra 1,000 segments $15; inbound counts; no rollover |
| Intercom | Per segment, tiered from $0.06 (first 500) down to $0.01 (over 100,000) | Usage on top of seats | No segments included; sent and received both count |
| Front | No texting price. SMS runs through an integration (Twilio, Dialpad); seats $25, $65, $105 | Per seat plus the carrier's bill | Billed by the integration |
| Freshdesk | No texting price. The SMS channel needs your own Twilio account | Per agent plus Twilio usage | Twilio rates apply |
| Gorgias | No public price. SMS is billed per SMS ticket, shown only inside the app | Per ticket | Not published |
| Podium | No price published. Routes to sales | Not stated | Not stated |
| Twilio (API) | $0.0083 per US SMS segment out or in; MMS $0.022 out | Per segment | Local number $1.15, toll-free $2.15 a month; carrier fees on top |
| Plivo (API) | $0.0077 per US SMS segment out or in; MMS $0.018 | Per segment | Local number $0.50, toll-free $1.00 a month |
| Telnyx (API) | $0.004 per US SMS segment out or in; MMS $0.015 out | Per segment | Carrier fees on top |
A segment is 160 plain characters, or 70 if the message carries an emoji or another special character, so a long reply is often billed as two or three. MMS is the expensive case almost everywhere: it uses 2 credits at Heymarket, 3 at Textline and SlickText, and HubSpot counts an inbound picture as 5 segments. A customer who sends a photo of a damaged delivery costs you more than the ten texts around it.
The three ways texting software bills you
Before you compare any two numbers, sort the quote into one of three shapes. Each one punishes a different kind of team.
- Per account, unlimited users. Text Request, Sakari, SlickText, TextUs and EZ Texting price the line and the message volume, not the people. Adding the eighth agent costs nothing. Adding a second location or a second number usually does.
- Per user. Quo, Heymarket and MessageDesk price the seat. That is cheap for three agents and expensive for twenty, and the seat minimums (two at Heymarket, three on MessageDesk Team) set the real entry price.
- Help desk add-on. Zendesk, HubSpot and Intercom treat SMS as a channel inside a product you already license per agent, then meter the messages. The marginal cost is low if you own the suite and high if you buy the suite to get texting.
If your support team already works from a shared inbox, the add-on route keeps every conversation in one queue, which matters more than the per-message rate. We covered how teams set that up in our guide to shared inbox management for customer support.
What a five-agent support team pays for texting
The table prices one realistic case: five agents, one local business number, 3,000 segments a month split evenly between customers texting in and agents replying. Prices are the published rates above, monthly billing unless the vendor only publishes annual.
| Option | Monthly cost | Year one | How we got there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twilio API, no inbox software | About $41 to $44 | About $560 to $585 incl. registration | 3,000 x $0.0083 plus $1.15 number, $5 to $8 carrier fees, $10 campaign fee, $61 once. You still need an interface |
| Sakari | About $91 | About $1,094 | 3,000 segments at the entry rate of about $0.0304; users unlimited |
| Quo Business, annual | About $117 to $118 | About $1,420 to $1,440 | 5 x $23 plus $1.50 to $3 registration a month and $19.50 once; texting unlimited under fair use |
| Text Request Starter | $174 | $2,088 | $145 for 2,500 texts plus 500 x $0.058 |
| SimpleTexting base tier | About $217 | About $2,600 | $39 plus 2,500 extra credits at $0.055 plus 2 extra users at $20. A larger credit tier would cost less |
| Heymarket Standard | $245 to $335 | $2,940 to $4,020 | 5 x $49 in seats, plus up to $90 if all 3,000 messages are bought as credits at $0.03 |
| TextUs Pro | $299 | $3,588 | 5,000 messages included, so no overage at this volume |
| Zendesk Suite Team plus texting | About $303 | About $3,636 | 5 x $55 in seats, $1 number, 3,000 x $0.009. If you already own Suite, texting itself is about $28 a month |
| HubSpot SMS add-on | $105 on top of Hub seats | $1,260 on top | $75 for 1,000 segments plus 2 x $15 for the next 2,000 |
Two things stand out. First, everything with a real inbox lands between roughly $90 and $335 a month for this team, so the price list rarely decides the deal on its own. Second, the cheapest per-user plan stops being cheap fast. Quo Business annual at $23 a seat passes Text Request Starter at $174 a month somewhere between seven and eight agents, at the same message volume. From eight agents up, a per-account plan wins on price, and it keeps winning every time you hire.
How much does SMS customer service software cost per month?
For a small US support team, SMS customer service software costs $25 to $300 a month at published list prices. Entry plans such as Salesmsg Basic ($25) and EZ Texting Launch ($25) cover one user and 500 messages. Team plans that include several agents and a few thousand messages run $145 to $299 (Text Request Starter, TextUs Pro), and per-user tools cost $23 to $49 a seat.
Ask any vendor for the monthly total at your real message volume, including inbound if they count it. Intercom and HubSpot both count received messages, Zendesk bills segments in both directions, and SlickText states that incoming texts are free. That single rule can move a quote by half.
What are 10DLC fees and who pays them?
10DLC fees are the carrier charges for texting from an ordinary 10-digit business number, and you pay them whichever software you use. Registration with The Campaign Registry costs $4.50 for a low-volume brand or $46 for a standard brand (secondary vetting included), plus $15 to vet each campaign and a monthly campaign fee, $10 for standard use cases or $1.50 for low-volume mixed.
The Campaign Registry raised these on August 1, 2025 (brand registration from $4.00 to $4.50, vetting from $40.00 to $41.50). On top come per-message carrier surcharges on registered traffic, as published by Twilio and Telnyx on October 5, 2026:
| Carrier | SMS surcharge | MMS surcharge |
|---|---|---|
| AT&T | $0.0035 per message | $0.009 |
| T-Mobile | $0.0045 outbound, $0.0025 inbound | $0.01 |
| Verizon | $0.005 outbound (Twilio, Plivo), $0.0045 (Telnyx); none inbound | $0.007 outbound |
For the five-agent team above, carrier surcharges come to about $5 to $8 a month. They are real but small. The fee that hurts is the one buried in a credit: Textline adds its own $15 monthly campaign charge, and a $0.058 overage text at Text Request is roughly four to five times what the same message costs at wholesale ($0.0083 at Twilio plus about $0.004 in carrier fees). You are paying for the inbox, the compliance handling and support, which is fine, as long as you know that is the trade.
Do I need to register 10DLC for customer service texting?
Yes. US carriers require every business sending application-to-person texts from a local 10-digit number to register a brand and a campaign, and unregistered traffic is filtered or blocked. Most texting vendors file the registration for you and pass the fees through. Ask who owns the registration, because moving vendors later can mean re-registering and a gap in delivery.
Is toll-free texting cheaper than 10DLC?
Toll-free numbers skip The Campaign Registry and go through a separate toll-free verification instead, and the number itself costs more ($2.15 a month at Twilio against $1.15 for a local number). Customers also reply less readily to an 800 number than to a local one. For a support line that customers text back, a local 10DLC number is the usual choice.
Is SMS cheaper than phone support?
Per conversation, usually yes, because one agent can keep several text threads open while a call ties up the whole agent. The software is not where the saving lives. A texting thread of ten segments costs under $0.60 even at a $0.058 credit, while the agent minutes on a phone call cost far more. The saving shows up in staffing, which is why the number to model is conversations per agent hour, the same input we use in our contact center software pricing comparison.
Texting does not replace the phone line. Customers still call for anything urgent, so most teams keep the phone menu and offer text as the option inside it. If you are pricing both, the IVR system cost guide shows what the phone side adds, vendor by vendor.
Which SMS customer service software is best for small businesses?
For a small business with one to five people answering texts, the best value is a per-user tool with unlimited texting (Quo) or a per-account tool priced on volume (Sakari, Text Request Basic). Choose per-user if every agent also takes calls from the same number. Choose per-account if more than about seven people will share the inbox or if headcount swings with the season.
Larger support teams that already run a help desk should price the add-on first. Texting inside Zendesk or HubSpot costs less than a separate tool once the seats are paid, and it keeps texts, email and chat in one ticket history. The texting-only tools win when the help desk charges per ticket (Gorgias) or needs your own Twilio account (Freshdesk) and you would rather not run that.
What to ask before you sign
- Inbound counting. Does a received message use a credit or segment? Ask for it in writing.
- Segments and MMS. How many credits does a 300-character reply use, and how many does an inbound photo use?
- Who registers 10DLC, and who owns the brand. Get the one-time and monthly fees itemized, including any vendor markup on the $10 campaign fee.
- Number porting. Can you bring your existing business number, and can you take it with you when you leave?
- Seat minimums and annual terms. Heymarket requires two users and annual billing, MessageDesk Team three users. Price the minimum, not the headline seat.
- Integrations. Texts that never reach the CRM or help desk create a second customer history. Many teams sync those conversations into the systems they already use rather than switching tools to get a native connector.
If you are deciding whether texting should be handled by people or by an AI agent first, the per-resolution prices in our AI customer service software pricing guide are the comparison to run next to this one.
The short version
SMS customer service software for a five-agent team costs about $90 to $335 a month at published 2026 prices, plus about $61 once and $10 a month in 10DLC registration and a few dollars in carrier surcharges. The billing unit decides the winner: per-user plans are cheapest up to about seven agents, per-account plans are cheapest after that, and a help desk add-on is cheapest if you already own the help desk. Five vendors, including Podium and Textline, publish no plan price at all.