Search for a way to text a few thousand people at once and you'll find two very different kinds of tools under the same label. Some are free phone apps that send from your personal number. Others are business platforms that register your brand with the carriers and handle opt-outs. From the outside they look the same: you paste a list, write a message and hit send. They behave very differently once a carrier sees the traffic.
This post sorts the options into tiers, explains where the free tools stop working, and shows the actual math for a paid campaign. We make Ready, so we're one of the options here. We'll also say where something else is the better fit, including where it costs less per message.
The short version: free apps stop working at around "a list"
Free tools are fine for texting your soccer team or a dozen regulars. They are not built for sending the same marketing message to hundreds or thousands of people. US carriers treat that as application-to-person (A2P) traffic, and A2P traffic on a long-code number has to be registered under 10DLC. If it isn't, carriers filter it.
The divide comes down to registration. A tool either registers your brand and campaign with the carriers or it doesn't, and price matters less than that. If you're new to the term, our 10DLC explainer covers it in plain language.
Tier 1: free and consumer apps
Your phone's group text
Group texts become group MMS threads. Every reply goes to everyone, nobody can opt out cleanly, and replies come back as a mess of "who is this?" messages. It works for 10 people and it doesn't work for 500.
"Mass text" apps that use your SIM
Several apps in the app stores send individual texts one at a time from your own phone number, which gets around the reply-all problem. You still have a personal number sending identical promotional content to a large list, with no carrier registration behind it. Carrier filtering systems look for exactly that pattern: high volume, identical bodies, many recipients, from a number registered to a person. Expect messages to go undelivered with no error, and possibly your number to get flagged.
Google Voice
Google Voice is free and has a business tier, but it's built for conversations, not campaigns, and it has its own sending limits. We covered the specifics in Google Voice for business texting: limits.
Why consumer-app sends get filtered
Carriers separate person-to-person traffic from business traffic. Business traffic on a 10DLC number that isn't tied to a registered brand and campaign gets heavy scrutiny. Filtering is automated and it is silent: the app shows "sent," but the message never arrives. There is also nothing in these apps to honor STOP across your list, keep sends out of the recipient's quiet hours, or record who agreed to receive texts. Those gaps are where TCPA exposure comes from, and TCPA damages run $500 to $1,500 per text.
Tier 2: subscription and credit-bundle platforms
Tools like EZ Texting, SimpleTexting and Textedly are real business platforms. They register you and handle opt-outs. You buy a monthly plan with a bundle of credits, and the per-message cost depends on how much of the bundle you use.
These are fine choices for a small business that wants a polished UI and predictable monthly billing. The tradeoff is the credit-bundle math. You pay for the plan whether or not you send, and overages or plan jumps can change your effective per-message rate. We walk through that math in our Textedly alternative post.
Tier 3: raw CPaaS APIs
Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo and Bandwidth sell the underlying messaging pipe. They cost the least per segment of anything here. Twilio runs about $0.0083 per segment, and our Standard rate is above that.
What you don't get is a product. You build the contact list, the campaign UI, the inbox, quiet-hours logic, opt-out propagation and usually your own registration flow. That's the right call if you have engineers and texting is core to what you're building. It's a lot of work if you just want to send a campaign on Friday.
Tier 4: CRM-bundled texting
If you already live in GoHighLevel, its built-in LeadConnector phone (LC Phone) is about $0.0083 per message, roughly $0.0128 all-in. That is also less per message than our Standard rate. If you're happy with it, stay on it. Teams install Ready into GoHighLevel when they want registration handled in-app, a Ready-level compliance stack, or the Ready Dialer next to their texting. The GHL setup guide shows how that works.
The tiers side by side
| Option | Registered A2P route | Opt-out handling | Pricing model | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone group text | No | None | Free | Under ~20 people you know |
| Consumer mass-text apps | No | Manual at best | Free or small app fee | Personal use only |
| Google Voice | No (conversational) | Manual | Free / per-user plan | One-to-one replies |
| Subscription platforms | Yes | Built in | Monthly plan + credits | Small teams wanting a polished UI |
| Raw CPaaS (Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo) | Yes, you set it up | You build it | Lowest per segment | Teams with engineers |
| GoHighLevel LC Phone | Yes | Built in | ~$0.0083/msg | Existing GHL users |
| Ready | Yes, in-app | Built in, propagates across campaigns | $0.0075/segment + $0.0045 carrier fee | Businesses and platforms wanting compliance and campaigns in one place |
What a compliant campaign actually costs
Here is a worked example. It assumes 5,000 opted-in contacts on Ready Standard.
Example A: one emoji, 175 characters
An emoji switches the message to unicode, where each segment in a multipart message holds 67 characters. 175 characters need 3 segments.
- 5,000 contacts × 3 segments = 15,000 segments
- 15,000 × $0.0075 = $113 in rate
- Plus 15,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fee
Example B: same offer, no emoji, 150 characters
Plain GSM-7 text fits 160 characters in one segment.
- 5,000 × 1 segment = 5,000 segments
- 5,000 × $0.0075 = $38 in rate
- Plus 5,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fee
Dropping one emoji and 25 characters cuts the bill to a third. Both totals are all-in and exclude the compliance surcharge. Scrubbing and landline validation are each $0.003 per segment when switched on for an account, and both are off by default. Replies you receive bill like sent texts, so an engaged list costs a bit more than the outbound math alone. There's more on trimming segments in how to reduce SMS costs.
How long it takes to go out
A fresh standard campaign with no vetting usually gets roughly 1 to 4 segments per second. At an assumed 3 segments per second, Example A's 15,000 segments take about 83 minutes. Example B's 5,000 take under 30 minutes. T-Mobile also applies a daily brand cap based on trust score. The lowest tier is about 2,000 messages a day, so a brand new low-score brand may need to spread a 5,000-contact send over several days. Brand vetting ($79 Standard / $179 Enhanced, one-time) can raise that cap, but it only changes the cap when the score crosses a tier.
What Ready includes
Ready is a texting platform and messaging API for businesses and for software companies that text on behalf of their own customers. The pieces relevant to campaigns:
- Registration in-app. Brand and campaign registration are filed from the dashboard, and most approvals take 2 to 7 days. There's no setup fee. You pay the first month ($25) at submit, then $25/mo for registration + $2 per number.
- STOP handling. An inbound STOP is honored and the opt-out propagates, so that contact can't be texted again from any campaign. Opted-out numbers are refused up front and not charged.
- Quiet hours. Sends are held outside permitted hours in the recipient's local time and charged only when they actually go out. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.
- Optional scrubbing. You can screen known TCPA-litigator and DNC numbers before a send. The standalone scrub is $0.005 per contact.
- Attestation records. Each bulk send and each API send that sets
consent_attestedrecords who sent it, to how many people and when. That record is the sender's attestation, not a per-contact consent record. Your signup form or store still needs to keep each person's opt-in time and wording. - API for platforms.
POST /v1/messages/bulktakes up to 100 recipients per call. Larger lists go in batches. See the bulk messages docs.
None of this makes you immune to lawsuits. Compliance is ultimately the sender's responsibility. These features reduce risk and make good practice the default.
Two honest notes. First, campaigns send from regular SMS numbers. Our blue line (iMessage) is for one-to-one conversations, not bulk sends. Second, registration approves your campaign, but carriers still filter on message content. If messages go missing after approval, read why approved campaigns still get filtered.
If you're texting advocacy alerts, donation appeals or voters, email support@tryready.com before your first send and wait for our reply. Signing up and registering isn't enough on its own for those use cases.
Which mass texting service has no long-term contract?
Ready bills prepaid credits per segment, with no seat plan and no bundle to commit to. The fixed monthly lines are registration and each number you rent, and the first 20 one-to-one texts are free.
Many subscription tools sell monthly plans, and some offer annual discounts, so check the term on each vendor's own pricing page before you pay. Free text blast apps are the other extreme, but they send from your own SIM and stop working once carriers see list-sized traffic.
Picking the right tool
- Texting a small group you know personally: your phone is fine.
- Sending promotions to a list: you need a registered platform. That rules out every free consumer app.
- You have engineers and want the lowest per-segment price: a raw CPaaS API.
- You're already on GoHighLevel and happy with it: LC Phone.
- You want registration, opt-outs, quiet hours, campaigns and an inbox without building them: a platform like Ready or one of the subscription tools. Compare the subscription tools on their credit math, and compare all of them on what's included.
Whatever you choose, text only people who opted in. Cold outreach belongs on phone and mail, not SMS.
If you want to try Ready, sign up and add a card. Your first 20 one-to-one texts are free, so use them to test before you register, because they end when a registration is paid for. Campaigns bill from the first text. You can send up to 500 texts a month at the normal rate before registering, and you'll need to register to go beyond that.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best text message marketing app?
It depends on who's sending. A registered platform with opt-out handling and campaigns suits a business texting a list, a raw CPaaS API suits a team with engineers, and your phone's own app suits a dozen people you know personally.
Is there a free text blast app?
Free apps exist, but they send from your personal number and get filtered once the volume looks like a campaign. For a list of any size, use a registered platform, and treat the free tier as a way to test.