The Top 5 Attentive Alternatives for SMS Marketing

When you’re searching for an SMS marketing platform, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the variety of products and services out there. 

One option you may have come across is Attentive, especially if you’re in the retail and e-commerce space. The company helps more than 5,000 brands — including Coach, Chanel, and Urban Outfitters — interact with their audiences via SMS.

Curious how Attentive stacks up against its top competitors? We did a deep dive into Attentive and five similar platforms, looking at features, pricing, what customers say about them, and more. 

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 brands looking to invest in an ecommerce-first platform, Attentive offers opportunities to integrate across tools, create autoresponses 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 demo before they buy 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. 

What customers love:

• Attentive primarily targets e-commerce businesses, 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.  
• 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.

What customers dislike: 

• 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 traditional two-way messaging, where retailers can chat back and forth with customers in real time. Instead, they have Two-Way Journeys™, which limits customers’ messaging options. They do, however, offer the Attentive Concierge™ service team that interacts with your customers on a one-to-one basis.

Now, let’s look at Attentive’s top five competitors.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• SimpleTexting
• Klaviyo
• EZ Texting
• Podium
• Postscript

SimpleTexting

How it works: SimpleTexting is known for its user-friendly platform that comes with a full suite of features no matter which pricing plan you’re on. Top features include two-way messaging, mass texting, scheduled and recurring texts, autoresponders, and segmentation capabilities. Get more contacts in a few clicks with built-in tools like web forms, click-to-text buttons,  keywords, and popup widgets. 

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 integrate SimpleTexting with your favorite tools and platforms or have SimpleTexting’s team build and maintain custom integrations for you.

SimpleTexting Pricing

SimpleTexting’s prices start at $29/month for 500 messaging credits and increase with the number of credits you need each month. Unused credits roll over to the next month, and you can add more credits at any time without needing to upgrade your account.

You can test drive the platform free for 14 days, no credit card required.

What customers love:

• SimpleTexting offers both mass texting and two-way messaging, so you can choose how best to communicate with your customers.
• Businesses can have multiple numbers under one account, so you can divide SMS responsibilities across your business.
• On top of available DIY integrations through Zapier, SimpleTexting has its own in-house custom integrations team to build free integrations for customers on the $549/month plan or higher.
• You can build and customize unlimited templates and set up unlimited keywords based on your audience and desired outcome. 
• Customer support is available seven days a week, and it’s easy to connect with a live support representative if you need personalized assistance.

What customers dislike:

• SimpleTexting doesn’t have email capability. It’s an SMS-only platform.
• 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.

Klaviyo

How it works:  Klaviyo, a hybrid email and SMS marketing platform, provides e-commerce retailers with services for retention and growth. It specializes in contact segmentation and personalization, and robust analytics.

With Klaviyo, you can segment customers based on actions they take in your online store, like abandoned carts, and send them targeted messages, like order updates and review requests.

Klaviyo Pricing

Klaviyo’s pricing is based on the number of email and SMS contacts you have, as well as how many messaging credits you need. The starting price is $20/month for up to 500 contacts, 150 monthly messaging credits, and 5,000 monthly email sends.

It also has a free plan with 250 contacts or fewer that includes 500 monthly email sends and 150 monthly messaging credits.

What customers love:

• It’s a hybrid email and SMS marketing platform, which helps make efforts across these two channels more cohesive.
• You can A/B test your text messages’ content and send times to see what resonates best with your audience.
• The flow feature lets you visualize and automate your campaigns, and it comes with a library of pre-built workflows.
• It has native integrations with top e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.

What customers dislike:

• You can’t use Klaviyo’s SMS platform without using its email platform, so you’d have to switch if you already have an email service.
• Customers report long wait times to speak with a live customer support representative.
• Unlike most SMS platforms, Klaviyo limits the number of contacts you can send to, depending on your pricing plan.

EZ Texting

How it works: People who are new to SMS or who aren’t comfortable with most SaaS tools will love EZ Texting’s intuitive platform and valuable features. It’s the only SMS marketing service that offers a native integration with Shutterstock for stock photos. 

Adding to its ease of use, EZ Texting offers customers a comprehensive guide for beginners, so you can get up and running quickly. You can try the platform free for 14 days.

EZ Texting Pricing

EZ Texting’s pricing plans are grouped into four tiers: Value, Essentials, Premium, and Custom.

• Value: Starts at $24/month for 200 credits and doesn’t include MMS messaging, web sign up forms, recurring texts, drip campaigns, link tracking, reporting, or API access. Limited to one keyword.
• Essentials: Starts at $36/month for 200 credits and doesn’t include recurring texts, drip campaigns, or API access. Limited to three keywords.
• Premium: Starts at $61/month for 200 credits and includes everything in the Essentials pricing plan, plus API access and an upgraded high-volume number. Limited to six keywords.
• Custom: Starts at $374/month, comes with everything in the Premium pricing plan, and has unlimited keywords.

What customers love:

• There’s little to no learning curve for customers who are new to SMS marketing.
• The extensive template library makes it even easier to create campaigns.

What customers dislike:

• Customers on lower pricing plans miss out on the ability to send MMS messages, schedule recurring texts, run drip campaigns, and access the API for advanced integrations.
• It’s more expensive than similar platforms, and unused messaging credits don’t carry over to the next month.
• The mobile app version is limited to a handful of features.

Podium

How it works: Podium is a straightforward SMS marketing service that’s made specifically for local businesses. It offers the ability to send mass text messages, request reviews, chat with customers, send text blasts, and collect payments. 

Podium Pricing

Podium has three pricing plans:

• Essentials: Starts at $289/month for 1,000 contacts and three team members
• Standard: $449/month with unlimited contacts and team members
• Professional: $649/month with unlimited contacts and team members

The higher the plan, the more features you have access to. You can also try Podium free for 14 days.

What customers love:

• Podium has convenient built-in features for collecting reviews and payments via text.
• You can manage customer reviews across several platforms, all from your Podium dashboard.
• The website chat feature is particularly useful for responding to a high volume of questions and cutting down on phone calls.

What customers dislike:

• Customers who have had to reach out to the support team expressed their dissatisfaction with wait times and the level of care.
• The pricing is higher than many competitors, and the lowest pricing plan is greatly limited in features.

Postscript

How it works: If you use Shopify to run your online store, Postscript is made especially for you. It helps Shopify stores grow their contact lists, have two-way conversations, and leverage their store’s historical data for more personalized SMS campaigns.

Retailers will also appreciate Postscript’s automation features, like abandoned cart recovery, shipping notifications, welcome messages, and loyalty offers.

Postscript Pricing

Postscript structures its pricing into four tiers:

• Free: No monthly cost, only pay for messaging credits and carrier fees; basic features
• Growth: $100/month, plus messaging credits and carrier fees; includes unlimited keywords and integrations
• Professional: $500/month plus, plus messaging credits and carrier fees; includes a dedicated onboarding specialist, priority customer support, API access, and more
• Enterprise: Price varies; includes a dedicated account manager and priority support

What customers love:

• It’s made specifically for Shopify stores.
• All pricing plans offer unlimited contact segments and advanced analytics using your Shopify data.
• The free plan, while limited, is perfect for brands that are new to SMS.

What customers dislike:

• Some customers have expressed frustration with the platform’s UI/UX and the limitations of the analytics dashboard.

Methodology

Why listen to us about the best Attentive alternatives for SMS marketing? We know, we’re a bit biased — we believe in our platform’s value. But we’re also aware of our own limitations, and we have intimate knowledge of how platforms like ours work.

To create this report of the best Attentive alternatives, we mined real customer reviews from third-party review sites and gathered insights from our internal teams that speak to alternative platforms’ customers every day. 

Choosing the Best Attentive Alternative

We can’t tell you which SMS marketing platform is the right one for your business, but can tell you that these five Attentive competitors are worthy opponents.

The best alternative to Attentive for your specific brand will depend on your budget, which features are non-negotiable for you, and your level of comfort with SMS marketing. Fortunately, they all offer a free trial or demo, so you can see for yourself which will best help you connect with your customers.