SMS marketing agency: hire one or run texting in-house?

Hire an SMS marketing agency if you have no one with two to four hours a week to write, send and answer texts, or if you need strategy you can't build yourself. Run it in-house if you can spare those hours, because the hard parts (registration, opt-outs, quiet hours) are now handled by the software, and you keep full control of your list, your numbers and your sender reputation.

The rest of this post covers what an agency or "SMS marketing company" actually does for its fee, the questions that protect you if you hire one, and what doing it yourself looks like each week, with the costs worked out. We make Ready, a texting platform, so we have a stake in the in-house option. We also think an agency is the right call for some businesses, and we say which ones below.

What an SMS marketing agency actually does

The label covers a wide range of services. Most agencies bundle some mix of these:

• Strategy and calendar. Deciding what to send, how often, and to which segments of your list.
• Copywriting. Writing promos, reminders and drip campaigns that convert and don't trip carrier filters.
• List growth. Setting up website pop-ups, keyword opt-ins ("Text JOIN to…") and checkout opt-in boxes.
• Registration and compliance setup. Registering your brand and campaign for A2P 10DLC, writing your opt-in language, and configuring STOP handling.
• Sending and reporting. Scheduling campaigns, watching delivery and reporting clicks and revenue.
• Platform resale. Many agencies don't own software. They run your account on a texting platform and rebill you for the messages, often with a markup.

That last point matters more than it sounds. You're often paying for two things at once: the agency's expertise and access to a platform you could open yourself. Figure out which one you actually need.

What an agency can't do for you

An agency can't make you compliant by contract. Under the TCPA, the business whose name is on the text usually carries real exposure, at roughly $500 to $1,500 per text for violations. If the agency texts a list you handed over without proper consent, "the agency did it" is not a reliable defense. We cover how that liability splits in when your client's bad list gets texted, who gets sued.

Questions to ask any SMS marketing company before you sign

These five questions decide whether you can leave cleanly in a year. Get the answers in writing.

1. Whose name is on the 10DLC registration?

Carriers require every business texting from a regular 10-digit number to register a brand (your business, tied to your EIN) and a campaign (what you send). If the agency registers under its own brand, or puts your traffic on a shared registration, your sending history doesn't belong to you. You want the brand registered as your business. Our 10DLC rules and requirements post covers what carriers check.

2. Who owns the phone numbers?

Your customers save your number and reply to it. If the agency's account holds the number and the relationship ends, you may lose it. Ask whether the numbers sit in an account in your name and whether you can take them with you.

3. Can I export my list with consent and opt-out status?

Your list is the asset. Ask for a full export on demand that includes each contact's opt-in source and date, plus the full opt-out list. If you move platforms without the opt-out list, you risk texting people who already said STOP. That is one of the fastest ways into a TCPA complaint.

4. Where is per-contact consent recorded?

Someone has to keep proof of when and how each person opted in: the form wording, the page, the timestamp. Many platforms, Ready included, record the sender's attestation per send (who sent, to how many, when) but not a per-contact opt-in record. That record usually lives in your website form tool, store or CRM. Make sure someone owns it.

5. What do I pay per message, and what's the markup?

Ask for the underlying per-segment cost, the carrier fee and the agency's margin as separate lines. A "per-message" price that hides the carrier fee makes comparison impossible. One more detail: carriers bill by segment, not by message, so a long or emoji-heavy text costs more than one unit.

What running texting in-house costs: a worked example

Here's a realistic monthly picture for a small business doing it themselves on Ready. The assumptions are stated, so swap in your own.

Assumptions: 2,000 opted-in contacts, four campaigns a month, each kept under 160 plain characters (1 segment), and replies equal to about 10% of sends.

The $0.0075 is Ready's Standard per-segment rate, and the carrier fee is itemized separately on its own line. That all-in figure excludes the compliance surcharge. Scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment if you switch them on for your account, and both are off by default.

Now watch what one emoji does. A 175-character promo with an emoji splits into 3 unicode segments (an emoji drops the limit to 70 characters, 67 per part when split). The same 2,000-contact send becomes 6,000 segments instead of 2,000, or $45 in segment charges for one campaign instead of $15. Keeping copy plain and short is the cheapest optimization there is. Our post on 10DLC cost covers the registration fees in more detail.

To compare against an agency, take its monthly retainer from your quote, add whatever it charges per message, and set that against the table above plus the value of your own hours. An agency is worth it when its strategy brings in more revenue than the difference costs you.

What in-house looks like week to week on Ready

Setup (once)

1. Sign up and add a card. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it. Your first 20 texts are free, and they're one-to-one sends, so use them to test before you register. They end the moment a registration is paid for.
2. Buy a number and submit your brand and campaign registration in-app. There's no setup fee. You pay $25 at submit for the first month ($25/mo for registration), plus $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. While you wait, an account can send up to 500 texts a month at the normal rate. If you bought your number before registering, those texts go out on Ready's shared registration.
3. Pick the right use case. Registering "marketing" when you mostly send reminders, or the reverse, causes problems later. See matching use case to what you actually send.
4. Import your opted-in contacts. SMS is for people who gave consent or texted you first. Cold outreach belongs on the phone or in the mail.

A typical week (roughly 2 to 4 hours, an estimate)

• Monday, about 45 minutes: Plan the week's campaign. Draft it with the AI message writer, then run the spam-filter check. Count your segments before you schedule.
• Tuesday, about 15 minutes: Schedule the campaign. Quiet-hours enforcement holds any text that would land outside permitted local hours for the recipient's area and sends it later. 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.
• Daily, about 15 minutes: Answer replies in the Inbox. You write the replies yourself. Ready's AI helps with drafting and checks; Ready no longer lets accounts create AI agents that auto-reply. For a hot lead, call from the Ready Dialer at $0.025/min.
• Friday, about 20 minutes: Check delivery, clicks and opt-outs. STOP replies are honored automatically and apply across every campaign, so nobody who opted out gets the next send.

If you already run your business in GoHighLevel, Ready installs natively and syncs messages both ways, so this whole routine happens inside GHL.

When hiring an agency is the right call

Here's where we'd hire one:

• No one owns it internally. If texting will happen "when someone has time," it won't happen. A weekly agency cadence beats an idle account.
• You need strategy, not sends. A larger ecommerce brand with browse-abandon flows, segmentation by purchase history and constant testing gets real value from specialists.
• You've had deliverability trouble you can't diagnose. A good agency knows the content-level filtering that registration alone doesn't fix.

The middle path often works best: open the account yourself, in your business's name, and let the agency work inside it. You own the registration, the numbers, the list and the opt-outs. The agency brings copy and strategy. If you part ways, you change one login and keep everything else. Agencies that refuse this setup are telling you something.

The practical takeaway

The software now handles the risky mechanics: registration, STOP handling, quiet hours and optional litigator scrubbing. What's left is judgment and time. Hire an agency for judgment you don't have or time you can't find. Either way, keep the registration, numbers and list in your own name. Compliance stays your responsibility no matter who presses send.

If you want to try the in-house route, you can sign up and send your first 20 one-to-one texts free before you register. Pricing is on the pricing page.

FAQ

What's the difference between an SMS marketing agency and an SMS marketing company?

People use the terms loosely. An agency usually means a service firm that runs strategy, copy and sending for you. A "company" can mean that, or a software platform you use yourself. Ask which one you're buying: people, software or both.

Do I need 10DLC registration if an agency texts for me?

Yes. Texts from regular 10-digit numbers need a registered brand and campaign. Ideally the brand is registered as your business, not the agency's, so the sending history belongs to you.

Who is liable if an agency texts people without consent?

Usually both parties carry exposure, and the business named in the text is rarely off the hook. TCPA damages run roughly $500 to $1,500 per text. Keep your own per-contact consent records and don't hand over lists of unknown origin.

How much time does in-house SMS marketing take?

For a small business sending one campaign a week, we estimate 2 to 4 hours: planning and writing, scheduling, daily replies and a weekly review. Automated reminders and drip campaigns add setup time once, then run on their own.

Can I switch from an agency to in-house later?

Yes, if you own the pieces. Before signing, confirm you can export contacts with opt-in and opt-out status and that the numbers and registration are in your name. With those in hand, switching mostly means moving your list and your login.