CallHub and EZ Texting alternatives: pricing, 10DLC and fit

CallHub, EZ Texting and TextMagic often show up on the same comparison lists. They solve different problems. CallHub grew up around advocacy and political outreach: peer-to-peer texting, phone banking and volunteer workflows. EZ Texting is a subscription marketing tool for small businesses. TextMagic is a pay-as-you-go sender that many teams use for notifications and simple campaigns. If you pick an alternative without knowing which job you're hiring for, you can end up paying for the wrong pricing model.

This post compares these tools on the three things that decide whether a texting tool works out: how you're billed, how much of the A2P 10DLC registration work the tool does for you, and which features you'll use. We make Ready, so we'll say where it fits and where one of these tools, or a raw API, is the better call.

Why these tools get lumped together

Search "EZ Texting alternative" or "CallHub alternative" and you get the same dozen names, because every one of them sends SMS from a US number. The overlap ends there.

• CallHub is built for organizations that mobilize people: campaigns, unions, advocacy groups and nonprofits. It focuses on volunteer-driven texting and calling.
• EZ Texting (people often search it as "Easy Texting") is a monthly subscription aimed at local businesses. You get a plan, included credits and a marketing-oriented interface.
• TextMagic is closer to a credit-based gateway with a web app on top. It's simple to start and simple to pay for.
• Ready is a messaging platform and API. Software companies use it to text on behalf of their own customers, with sub-accounts, per-customer 10DLC registration and compliance checks built in. Businesses also use the Ready app directly, and it installs into GoHighLevel as an LC Phone alternative.

We've written separate deep dives if you're only weighing one of these: see our TextMagic alternative breakdown, and the Textedly alternative post for the credit-bundle subscription model that EZ Texting also uses.

How the pricing models differ

We won't quote other vendors' current prices here. They change, and plan tiers make one-line comparisons misleading. The billing model is what drives your bill, so this section compares models.

Subscription plans with included credits

EZ Texting and similar tools sell a monthly plan with a bundle of credits. That works well if your volume is steady and close to the bundle size. It works poorly when you send heavily one month and barely at all the next: you either pay overage or leave unused credits on the table.

Prepaid credits, pay as you go

TextMagic and Ready both bill this way. Ready's billing is prepaid credits through Stripe. You pay the Standard rate of $0.0075 per segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. The carrier fee is itemized separately so you can read the bill. One flat Standard rate applies to every segment, sent or received, because replies you receive are billed like a sent text. Enterprise pricing is custom, so talk to us.

That quoted rate excludes the optional compliance surcharge. TCPA/DNC scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment when switched on for an account. Both are off by default.

Raw CPaaS per-segment pricing

Raw APIs cost less per segment, and we'll say so plainly. Twilio runs around $0.0083 a segment. GoHighLevel's LeadConnector runs around $0.0083 per message, about $0.0128 with carrier fees. Both are below our Standard rate. With Twilio you get a raw API and build the inbox, registration flow, opt-out logic and quiet-hours handling yourself. Our Twilio alternatives cost comparison covers that tradeoff in detail.

Registration support decides deliverability

Since carriers enforced A2P 10DLC, unregistered traffic from US local numbers gets filtered. A tool with a great interface and no registration help will still land you in the spam bucket. If you're new to this, start with what 10DLC is.

These are the questions to ask any vendor:

1. Who submits the brand and campaign? Do you do it yourself through a portal, does the vendor do it in-app, or is it a support ticket?
2. What does it cost, and what recurs? Registration has carrier-side monthly fees. Our 10DLC cost guide breaks down every fee.
3. Can you send while it's in review?
4. If you're a platform, can each of your customers get their own registration?

On Ready, brand and campaign registration happens in-app. There's no setup fee. The charge at submit is the first month, $25. After that the monthly cost is $25/mo for registration + $2/mo per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

An account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers, at its normal per-text rate. After that it has to register. If you bought a number before registering, you send on Ready's shared registration at the same rate while your own is in review.

For platforms, each sub-account gets its own numbers and its own 10DLC registration through the API. Docs: docs.tryready.com/guides/quickstart.

Optional brand vetting ($79 Standard / $179 Enhanced, one-time) raises your trust score and can lift T-Mobile's daily cap if it crosses a tier. It doesn't change your per-second rate. Most senders don't need it.

Feature comparison

Verify the "check current offering" cells on each vendor's site. These products change their registration flows often, and we'd rather send you to the source than guess.

Worked example: a month on Ready

The assumptions are stated so you can swap in your own numbers. This is an opted-in list of 5,000 contacts, with one promo a month and 10DLC registered on one number.

Segment count first. A 175-character promo with no emoji is 2 segments (two 153-character parts). Add one emoji and the limit drops to 67 characters per part, so the same text becomes 3 segments. Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending, so those never change the count. An emoji does.

• No emoji: 5,000 × 2 = 10,000 segments. That's 10,000 × $0.0075, plus 10,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees.
• With one emoji: 5,000 × 3 = 15,000 segments. That's 15,000 × $0.0075, plus 15,000 × $0.0045.
• Registration: $25 for registration + one number $2.
• Replies: at an assumed 5% reply rate with 1-segment replies, that's 250 segments × $0.0075, plus 250 × $0.0045.

The difference between those two versions comes from a single emoji. To compare against a subscription tool, take its plan price, divide by the credits included, and check how it counts multi-segment and unicode messages. That's where bundle math usually surprises people.

If you switch on scrubbing, add 10,000 × $0.003 to the no-emoji send. That's the compliance surcharge, outside the rates above. The standalone scrub is $0.005 per contact if you'd rather clean the list once before sending.

Where Ready fits

• You're a platform texting on behalf of customers. Sub-accounts, per-customer registration, one REST API, webhooks, and opt-out and quiet-hours handling built in. Sending is a single call:

POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <key>
Idempotency-Key: <uuid>

{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Your order #1042 has shipped.", "consent_attested": true}

Opt-outs and numbers on your Ban list are refused up front and not charged. An API text sent during the recipient's quiet hours is held (202) only if their window opens within 6 hours, and it's only charged when it sends; otherwise it is refused with 409 QUIET_HOURS_BLOCK and next_allowed_at, and you resend it then. Docs: docs.tryready.com/api/messages.

• You run GoHighLevel. OAuth install, two-way sync, and each sub-account mapped to its GHL location and kept isolated. LeadConnector is lower per message. You'd switch for the registration flow, the compliance checks and the blue line.
• You want the compliance stack in one place. Automatic STOP handling that applies across campaigns, quiet-hours holds, optional litigator/DNC scrubbing and an attestation log of who sent what to how many and when. That log isn't a per-contact consent record. Your signup form or store has to keep the opt-in time and wording. TCPA exposure runs $500 to $1,500 per text, so the scrub at half a cent is cheap insurance. It isn't immunity, and compliance stays your responsibility.
• You want iPhone users to see your name. A blue line texts as iMessage, needs no 10DLC registration, and can start up to 50 new conversations a day per line. Docs: docs.tryready.com/guides/imessage.

Where Ready is the wrong pick

• Political campaigns and volunteer texting programs. CallHub is purpose-built for volunteer workflows, and we won't pretend otherwise. If you plan to text advocacy alerts, donation appeals or voters through Ready, email support@tryready.com before the first send and wait for our reply. Signing up and registering isn't enough on its own for this traffic.
• You want the lowest cost per segment and have engineers. Twilio or another raw CPaaS will cost less per message.
• You want one fixed monthly bill and your volume matches a plan. A subscription tool like EZ Texting can be simpler to budget.
• You need auto-dialing. The Ready Dialer is click-to-call with recording, transcripts and a Missed call card in the Inbox thread for each missed call. It doesn't do queue or auto dialing.

How to choose

Match the tool to the job. Volunteer outreach points to CallHub. A predictable small-business marketing budget points to a subscription plan. A product that texts for its own customers, or a GHL agency that wants registration and compliance handled, points to Ready. For a wider field, see our business texting service comparison.

If you want to test Ready, the first 20 texts are free one-to-one sends. Use them before you register, because they end once a registration is paid for. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it. You can sign up here or check the rate card on our pricing page.