Attentive SMS Alternative: What It is and How It Works

If you’re one of the 60% of businesses looking to increase their SMS marketing budget in 2022, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the variety of products and services out there. 

Deciding which platform is right for you comes down to two questions:

1. What do you want to use your text marketing platform for?
   
2. What is your budget for text marketing?

You may think the answer to the first question is: ‘To reach customers, obviously.’ However, SMS marketing comes in a range of different forms. 

Do you want an inbound channel for customer service inquiries? Do you want to send and schedule campaigns? Are you acting on behalf of a public figure, looking to promote their music, or increase their personal brand through texting with fans? Think hard about what your main goals are.

Once you’ve understood why you want to use a text marketing platform, it’s time to look at the types of platforms available to you.

This article is going to walk you through two of the most popular text marketing platforms out there: Attentive and SimpleTexting.

Let’s compare the two.

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How Does Attentive Work? 

Attentive is an international text marketing platform aimed at eCommerce businesses. The company is focused on making mass messaging as easy as possible for its customers, especially those who run online stores.

For those looking to invest in an eCommerce-first platform, Attentive offers opportunities to integrate across platforms, create auto-responses to ensure no customer is left unattended, and review campaign performance with its analytics feature.

Attentive is a desktop tool, and those interested in the platform must go through a demonstration so they can decide if it’s the right tool for them. Thanks to the demo, Attentive customers know exactly what they are signing up for and are familiar with the platform when they sign up. 

Pros and Cons of Attentive

While Attentive maintains a leading position in the SMS eCommerce marketing industry, it’s always important to weigh up the pros and cons before signing up to a text marketing platform.

Pros:

• Attentive targets eCommerce businesses primarily, so their support team has an in-depth knowledge of the industry and how to best use SMS within it.
• You can integrate Attentive with data from other platforms, including Shopify and Salesforce.  
• You can use Attentive’s performance analytics to develop and adapt SMS marketing campaigns.
• The platform is no-code and easy to use no matter how familiar you are with business texting platforms.
• The platform offers Attentive Playbook — a community for customers to gain wider support from the Attentive team, access an SMS knowledge base, and access customizable templates.

Cons: 

• Every new Attentive customer must request a demo before having access to the platform.
• Attentive pricing is not available upfront – customers must sign up for the demo before being quoted a price.
• Access to the Attentive platform is only available through desktop.
• Attentive does not offer two-way messaging as a channel of communication – it is heavily focused on mass messaging and autoresponders.
• There is a limit on both keywords and custom fields per each Attentive customer.
• Attentive does not support text-to-vote surveys or texting polls. 

How Does SimpleTexting Work?

SimpleTexting is a North American text marketing platform. Prices start at $29 and increase based on how many credits a business needs per month to reach its customers – one credit is one message.

You can access the platform by both desktop and a mobile app, enabling you to receive notifications 24/7 from your customers. With Zapier, you can easily build integrations between SimpleTexting and your favorite tools, or even have a custom integration built for you by the SimpleTexting team (free for customers on the $229/month plan or higher).

Features include two-way messaging, mass texting, scheduling and appointment reminders and payment requests. Building subscriber lists is made easy with web forms, keywords and popup widgets. 

Pros and Cons of SimpleTexting

If you’re considering signing up to SimpleTexting, we have a list of pros and cons you can weigh up before making your decision.

Pros:

• SimpleTexting has a two-week free trial for new customers to test out the product before making a financial commitment.
• SimpleTexting offers both mass texting and two-way messaging, so you can choose how best to communicate with your customers.
• The SimpleTexting app is available on both desktop and mobile, PC and Mac.
• Businesses can have multiple numbers under one account, so you can divide SMS responsibilities across your business.
• On top of available integrations through Zapier, SimpleTexting has its own in-house custom integrations team to build free integrations for customers on the $229/month plan or higher.
• Customers have access to sent text analytics so they can adapt campaigns based on engagement and what it or isn’t working.
• You can build and customize unlimited templates and set up unlimited keywords based on your audience and the desired outcome.

Cons:

• SimpleTexting doesn’t have email capability. It’s an SMS-only platform.
• If you cancel your SimpleTexting account, your credits and data will be deleted immediately, so you should wait until the end of your billing cycle.
• The SimpleTexting platform is only available for North American phone numbers.
• SimpleTexting is not industry-specific, so if you are looking for a platform built exclusively for your niche, this may not be for you.

The Bottom Line on Attentive vs SimpleTexting

At the core, Attentive and SimpleTexting are both SMS marketing platforms leveraging the need for customer engagement and communication.

While the Attentive website is elusive on details about their platform, SimpleTexting operates on a ‘what you see is what you get’ mantra of transparency.

While recognizing the need for demos, the SimpleTexting demo is self-serve, so you can do it in your own time and without pressure. But our customer support team is available through chat to answer any questions you may have

For eCommerce businesses looking for more guidance on SMS, Attentive’s industry-specific use cases could be worth looking into.

As an overall platform, however, SimpleTexting offers more high-level features to improve business functionality, such as multi-number accounts, unlimited keywords, and an in-house custom integration team.