September 20, 2019 / Angelo Rosati / 1 Comment

The Best SMS Providers of 2020

SMS has quickly become one of the primary touchpoints between a business and its customers.

Whether you’re sending a text to confirm an appointment date or delivery time, or using SMS marketing to offer your customers exclusive offers, you want to make sure you’re using the best SMS provider for your business.

Depending on your business needs, there are many things to consider when selecting an SMS provider, such as pricing tiers, the selection of services they offer (like transactional or bulk SMS, for example) and whether or not they provide an API.

And, it goes without saying that researching all of these factors takes time, which is why we decided to round up all of the best SMS providers and answer those questions for you!

So without further ado, let’s dive in and take a look at the best SMS providers on the market (in no particular order).

If you’re looking for some shortcuts, jump straight to:

SMS providers for SMB
SMS providers for mid-market companies
SMS providers for enterprise companies

And if you’re interested in boosting the deliverability of your SMS campaigns overall, you can contact the Rebrandly sales team about using branded short URLs to avoid spam triggers and filters.

ClickSend

ClickSend is a global cloud-based communications platform as a service (CPaaS) for businesses and developers. ClickSend allows companies of all shapes and sizes to easily and cost-effectively communicate with their customers and staff via multiple channels. With SMS at its core, ClickSend powers billions of messages annually across the globe via direct routes, delivering their customers’ messages reliably and rapidly. If you’re looking for a multi-channel business communications platform, they also offer MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Email, Voice, Fax, Post and more all from one dashboard or via APIs.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, Facebook Messenger, Email to SMS, Voice, Fax and Post

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Sender

Sender’s omnichannel platform allows marketers and business owners to create and send hustle-free SMS & Email campaigns. Powerful automation ensures easy multi-channel automation workflows all within one interface. It makes the process effective and straightforward. Sender grants access to compose messages in bulk, create segmentations, grow contacts base, analyze analytics, etc. It also features ecommerce integrations that help connect with customers quickly and efficiently.

Best for: Small Business

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

ReplyBuy

ReplyBuy is the easiest way to start a conversation and close a sale. Their solutions enable businesses to collect payments with a simple text and manage one-to-one personalized conversations at scale. Some of their solutions include: Messenger — Send and receive personalized text messages at scale, Commerce — Unlock 6-second mobile transactions, Short Code CTA — Allow your business to leverage an easy to remember short code numbes, Integrations with Zapier, Salesforce, Salesloft, HubSpot, Outreach, Microsoft Dynamics, and more.

Services: Two-Way Text Messaging, P2P Texting, Landline Texting, Toll-Free Texting, Longcode Texting, Business Texting, Conversational Commerce, Short Code CTA – Leverage an easy to remember short code phone number as a call-to-action to drive inbound leads and grow your mobile list fast. Some integrations include Zapier, Salesforce, Salesloft, HubSpot, Outreach, Microsoft Dynamics, and more.

Best for: Mid-market and Enterprise

Free offering: No

API: Yes

Messente

Messente helps businesses across the world to reach out to anyone on the planet with a mobile phone by providing powerful messaging APIs.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Telegram messaging, Viber messaging

Best for: SMB, mid-market and enterprise

Free offering: Free messaging credit when signing up

API: Yes

Amio

Amio is a one-stop-shop for all messaging channels, connecting software to messengers, webchat, and SMS to help their customers engage and retain theirs.

Services: Transactional SMS, WhatsApp messaging, IP messaging, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, RCS Business Messages, Viber, Viber Business Messages, Integration to NLP providers, Integration to Botanalytics

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SMS-Magic

SMS-Magic provides messaging on CRM’s with top-rated App, SMS-Magic on Salesforce and Zoho CRM’s. Founded over 10 years ago, SMS-Magic quickly became a trusted messaging leader for businesses around the world.

Services: SMS, MMS, WhatsApp Messaging & Facebook Messaging on Salesforce, Zoho, etc. Email to Text, Messaging on the Go with Mobile App and much more

Best for: SMB and Mid Market

Free offering: No

API: Yes

JookSMS

JookSMS has been ranking consistently as one of the best SMS providers over the last 5 years. Over 2000 clients. Check out their flexible pricing plans with no contracts, no credit card or deposit required.

Services: Transactional SMS, Bulk SMS, SMS Marketing

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Dexatel

Dexatel is an A2P SMS service provider that helps businesses get their promotional or transactional messages across their audiences. Starting as a small business idea, Dexatel has grown to establish connections with telecommunication operators and vendors from all over the world. Due to this, the platform allows all the registered companies to send bulk SMS to every corner of the world. They also offers one of the most affordable and versatile text blast services in the market.

Services: Transactional SMS, Bulk SMS, SMS Marketing

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SMSGlobal

SMSGlobal is a leading SMS provider, trusted by SMB and enterprises alike for their business communications. SMSGlobal sets itself apart from many other SMS providers with reliable messaging routes supported by local data centres and free 24/7 support. No matter where you are in the world, you can chat with their SMS experts about all things strategy, technical queries, and more.

With a team of in-house developers, SMSGlobal provides SMS solutions that integrate seamlessly with the tools you rely on every day. Whether you use a CRM, marketing automation platform, or other software, their SMS integrations can help transform engagement with your communications and reach your business goals.

Services: SMS APIs, SMS automation, Email-to-SMS, Two-Way SMS, Virtual Dedicated Numbers, and ready-to-go SMS integrations for HubSpot, Zapier, WordPress, WooCommerce, Salesforce, and many more.

Best for: SMB, mid-market, and enterprise

Free offering: Free account with 25 free credits

API: Yes

SimplyCast

SimplyCast is an ISO 27001-certified, leading provider of interactive and multi-channel engagement software for organizations worldwide. Providing both emergency and non-emergency communication technology, SimplyCast offers 20+ communication tools and channels to help organizations maximize their efficiency. The company’s 360 Customer Flow Communication Platform is a feature-rich solution combining marketing automation, inbound marketing, and interactive communication. With customers in over 175 countries, including many of the most recognized brand names around the globe in the retail, non-profit and hospitality industries, SimplyCast provides organizations the ability to effectively reach customers on their preferred mode of communication.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing

Best for: SMB

Free offering: No

API: Yes

SMS-Smart

SMS-Smart is a web platform for SMS marketing management to help you set up and run bulk promotional and transactional SMS campaigns. They offer their customers A-Z destinations for sending bulk SMS to their customer database.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: No

API: Yes

Nexmo

Nexmo, the Vonage API Platform provides tools for voice, messaging and phone verification, allowing developers to embed programmable communications into mobile apps, websites and business systems. Nexmo enables enterprises to reimagine their digital customer experiences by providing them with the tools they need to easily communicate information to customers in real-time through text messaging, chat, social media and voice.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Voice

Best for: SMB, mid-market and enterprise

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Mobile Text Alerts

Mobile Text Alerts is mass texting software for businesses and organizations to communicate with their audience in a simple and effective way. Our easy-to-use yet robust SMS software allows businesses to grow and scale their sales with less effort by sending texts to customers. Simply add contacts (or have them add themselves via text or online) and you’re ready to send out messages. Features such as Link Tracking, Drip Campaigns, Subscriber Reports, and more help drive sales for your business. And send texts anytime and anywhere with our free mobile app as well.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Facebook Messenger, Email to SMS

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Routee

Routee is a leading cloud communications provider that designs, develops and distributes advanced Web and API automation solutions for corporations, retail businesses and the services industry around the world. Powered by AMD Telecom’s robust infrastructure, Routee brings a powerful engagement toolset to its trusted global partners and some of the most renowned Fortune 500 corporations. Based on country-specific coverage and channel popularity, leverage the most powerful user engagement toolkit and alternative communication paths to reach your audiences effectively. Achieve high visibility and universal customer reach across your markets.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Voice, Email to SMS, Facebook Messenger, Two-Factor Authentication with SMS, IP messaging, WhatsApp messaging

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: No

API: Yes

Comilio

Comilio is an easy-to-use, Italian SMS platform offering high-quality SMS routes with customizable sender IDs (both numeric and alphanumeric) and delivery acknowledgment.

No best-effort routes, no complex pricing, no overload of settings. Comilio can be used via its web UI or API, as well as on Zapier.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Sms77.io

Sms77 is a full service messaging provider, helping their customers to revolutionize their communication with their powerful API and comprehensive products like Voice, SMS and Text2Speech.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS, Voice

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SMSIdea

SMSIdea is a provider of global digital communication solutions, including bulk SMS & bulk mailing services. With a wide network of providers and lots of industry experience, they help enterprises to solve their communication needs.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS, Transactional Emails, OTP SMS, OTP mails

Best for: SMB, Enterprise

Free offering: No

API: Yes

Go4Clients

Go4clients is an omnichannel, cloud-based platform that offers SMS and voice features with the goal of generating effective results for the marketing strategies of their clients. For over 20 years, they have been working to bring the best telecommunication technology to their clients, with the purpose of improving engagement, retargeting, customer care, loyalty, and more.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, Email to SMS, Voice Broadcast / Interactive Voice Response

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Twilio

Twilio has developed robust yet accessible APIs for communications channels like voice, text, chat, and video. By making communications a part of every software developer’s toolkit, Twilio is enabling innovators across every industry — from emerging leaders to the world’s largest organizations — to reinvent how companies engage with their customers.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing

Best for: SMB, mid-market and enterprise

Free offering: Free trial with no credit card required

API: Yes

AvidMobile

AvidMobile is a cloud communications platform that allows both clients and software developers to engage customers through their SMS messaging platform. Their suite of services includes automated bulk short code messaging, AI-driven chatbots, one-to-one conversations, URL shortening, customer loyalty programs, mobile coupons, text-to-win contests and more. Whether you’re a small company looking to grow or a large company looking for an enterprise-level solution, AvidMobile will help you break through the marketing clutter and reach your customers.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, SMS Coupons, Loyalty, and Contests

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Tatango

Tatango is a great solution for high-volume mass texting. Founded in 2007, they provide easy-to-use software and industry expertise to enterprise marketers.

Services: Bulk SMS, SMS marketing

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: No

API: Yes

SMSEDGE

SMSEdge is an SMS marketing platform which uses routing technology, artificial intelligence and a proprietary scoring algorithm to help improve SMS delivery and campaign performance while driving automated optimization in real-time.

SMSEdge works as a measurable marketing tool that allows organizations to run smart SMS campaigns, discover who their users are, and track their marketing efforts.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing

Best for: SMB, mid-market and enterprise

Free offering: No

API: Yes

Mobiniti

Mobiniti is text marketing made simple. They are a robust and user-friendly mobile marketing platform offering the software, services and support to help you grow your business. In addition to this, they’re also a Tier 1 SMS Provider and Top Application Partner to the US Short Code Registry, providing solutions to acquire loyal customers’ mobile phone numbers and helping to build loyalty with these customers through frequent, targeted, mobile promotions. They offer a suite of text marketing services including mobile coupons, contests, scheduling and automation, shopping cart abandonment, and more.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, SMS coupons

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SimpleTexting

SimpleTexting makes it easy to text thousands of people at once or have one-to-one conversations with customers. Whether you need to provide customer support, gather feedback, host sweepstakes or set up automated drip campaigns, you can do it with SimpleTexting. And, with their iOS and Android apps, you can manage your projects from anywhere. Every plan comes with unlimited contacts, unlimited keywords, a dedicated number, free incoming messages, API access and more.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Free 2-week trial with no credit card required

API: Yes

MSG91

MSG91 is an enterprise A2P communication platform known for its SMS and communication solutions. They provide APIs, plugins, and a panel so you can send OTPs, transactional SMS, promotional SMS and transactional emails via their robust gateway all over the globe.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS, Voice, Virtual Numbers

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: MSG91 provides a free demo SMS for testing and also have a startup program that gives newly established startups the chance to qualify for 25k free Transactional or OTP SMS for six months

API: Yes

Plivo

The way businesses integrate communications into their applications is complicated. Plivo’s mission is to make it simple. Plivo is a communications platform that enables businesses to connect, engage and interact with their customers. Plivo simplifies the notorious complexity of telecom by offering simple and enterprise-grade building blocks.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, IP messaging, Email to SMS, Voice Messaging, Text to speech, Browser and Mobile based calling, Conference calls

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

The SMS Works

The SMS Works provides a powerful and low cost SMS API for developers.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SMS Masivos

SMS Masivos is a Mexico-based, bulk SMS company providing services across LATAM.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SMSAPI

SMSAPI is a bulk SMS messaging service available via the Customer Portal, mobile app or a simple and easy to integrate SMS API enabling integration with own IT systems, including e-commerce and CRM.

Currently, SMSAPI service is used by 7000 customers, both the largest global concerns, local businesses as well as public institutions and offices. The platform enables running personalized advertising and promotional SMS campaigns and supports customer service activities through automated and trigger-based text communication.

Moreover, SMSAPI platform is integrated with many marketing tools and popular services, including: Zapier, Shoper, PrestaShop, Magento, Shoplo, IAI-Shop, WordPress, Fasttony.es, SALESmanago, edrone, Salesforce and Google services.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS, RCS Business Messages, Newsletter SMS widget, SMS Authenticator, Google Verified SMS, Opt-out SMS

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Celcom

Founded in Chile in 2008, Celcom is a digital marketing company and SMS aggregator. Specializing in cellular and internet media, they offer digital marketing services with the goal of satisfying the growing communications needs of the industry.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Burst SMS

Burst SMS is a global online messaging platform that has been delivering messages since 2008. They specialize in helping businesses communicate with their customers via SMS with simple yet highly intuitive messaging tools.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS, MMS, Virtual Numbers, Automation, Chatbots, White Label Reselling Platform, 1,500+ SMS Integrations, and Reminders + Confirmations

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: 14-day free trial with no credit card required

API: Yes

SlickText

SlickText is an SMS marketing and mass texting service that provides businesses and organizations with software to engage their audience.

Services: Bulk SMS, SMS Marketing

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Wavecell

Wavecell, an 8×8 company, is a leading Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider. They help businesses transform their customer communications experience by leveraging their SMS, Chat Apps, Video Interaction and Voice solutions, packaged in a single cloud-based multi-channel platform. Their solutions are available as APIs and ready-to-use SaaS tools, empowering developers and enterprises alike to build better services. They ensure first-class connectivity to more than 190 countries while maintaining high-security standards on the platform.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, Facebook Messenger, LINE, WeChat, Viber, Zalo, Google RCS, Video Interaction and Voice

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: No

API: Yes

46elks

46elks aim to provide the best possible API service for programmatically leveraging telecom features such as virtual phone numbers, two-way SMS and automatic phone calls. They pride themselves on having reduced both the technical and financial barriers that such projects are usually burdened with, and their API service allows their customers to build tailor-made solutions for their specific business.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Heymarket

Heymarket is business text messaging for teams, providing shared inboxes for messaging with clients, partners or employees. They boast business-grade productivity features such as templates, assignments, scheduled messages, and more. And, they also have built-in controls such as roles and permissions, reports, custom fields, integrations, and a full-featured API.

Services: Bulk SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, IP messaging, Facebook Messenger

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Free 14-day trial

API: As part of their team plan tier

SendHub

SendHub is building tools to make it fast and easy for businesses to communicate with their customers and employees and is a popular choice for enterprises looking to maximize their communications with SMS and voice. With email and other channels losing effectiveness, more and more businesses are turning to SMS to ensure their message is delivered. SendHub is also an early adopter of pre-approved special high volume SMS and voice-enabled toll-free numbers so businesses can have one consistent line for branding purposes.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Voice

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: 14-day free trial

API: Yes

Texting Base

Texting Base is a bi-directional, Zapier-integrated texting platform for businesses that believe that talking “with” people is more effective than talking “at” people. A highlighted feature is the use of dedicated local numbers instead of shortcodes for that extra personal touch, and they offer full automation, pictures/videos, auto-responders, unlimited keywords and drip campaigns with geo-location.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, IP messaging, Incoming phone calls

Best for: SMB

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Sently

Sently is a SAAS solution that helps brands to engage their community on different conversational interfaces (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Voice Assistants, Web and more).

As a plug-and-play tool that’s easy to use and quick to set up, Sently enables business teams to easily interact with their audience on new communication channels more efficiently in order to broadcast content, sell products and services, and automate their customer support.

Services: WhatsApp messaging, Facebook Messenger, RCS

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

TXTImpact

TXTImpact is a USA-based SMS Marketing platform and provider of business text message marketing services.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, Email to SMS, SMS Polling, Text Message Survey

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

Telnyx

Telnyx provides a cloud-based platform that offers access to carrier-grade voice services over the Internet. Their focus is to enable a communication fabric for developers and platforms to integrate voice, messaging and other forms of rich communication into their applications and to facilitate that communication universally.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, Email to SMS

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

AtomPark

AtomPark’s online SMS Sender provides an opportunity to communicate quickly and securely with your potential and existing customers by sending mass SMS advertising, notifications, and other text messages.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS

Best for: Mid-market

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

TextMagic

TextMagic is a business texting platform dedicated to helping businesses improve their internal and customer communications, support and marketing. TextMagic provides an easy-to-use unified platform for all business SMS needs, from bulk text marketing campaigns to one-on-one customer service and lead follow-up. The platform enables businesses to send alerts, confirmations, notifications and reminders to both customers and employees, in addition to marketing and two-way conversations. TextMagic offers a web app to schedule and send messages, and a wide range of Zapier integrations and a well-documented API enable more specific applications, providing the flexibility to cater to many industries and business needs.

Services: Bulk SMS, Transactional SMS, SMS marketing, Email to SMS, Gateway API; Two-Way SMS Chat; SMS Distribution Lists; Zapier SMS Integrations ; SMS Surveys

Best for: Enterprise

Free offering: Yes

API: Yes

SMS and Short URLs

Some SMS providers offer their customers the opportunity to shorten URLs within their platform, but unfortunately, this in itself can pose a complication.

By using a generic URL shortener (think butt.ly or short.ly), you’re essentially accepting all liability associated with the domain used to create it (i.e. you’re taking responsibility for something that doesn’t even belong to you).

To break it down to brass tacks, the result of this in the SMS world is that your messages can be blocked or marked as spam due to the reputation of the link you’ve included.

Short URLs like butt.ly or short.ly are well-known for being used by spammers (for, you guessed it, spamming) because they have the ability to disguise a suspicious-looking link.

But, now that this is common knowledge, many email clients and telecommunications companies have made the decision to block them just in case they’re hiding malicious content.

Which is bad news for all of the innocent bystanders who happened to use the same service.

But, not to worry! That’s where branded links come in.

With branded links, you can create short, customizable links with a domain of your choosing. Think big. Think branded.

Think:

YourBrand.is/Better.

Makes an impact, doesn’t it?

By opting for a branded URL shortener, you can avoid the hassle of having to explain to your boss why your carefully crafted SMS campaign has landed in the inbox of exactly zero people.

Plus, it’s a branding opportunity you’ve been missing out on. Win/win!

SMS providers for SMB

SMS providers for mid-market companies

SMS providers for enterprise companies

For any enquiries, please email beth@rebrandly.com.

Further Reading:

This Article is About:

SMS providers
SMS marketing
Telecommunications
RCS
Voice messaging
Transactional SMS
WhatsApp messaging
Email to SMS

SMS and Short URLs

SMS providers for SMB

SMS providers for mid-market companies

SMS providers for enterprise companies

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