Guide · Business Texting
For an HVAC shop that texts 250 customers a month, a flat $19 line beats both the credit bundle and most metered plans
At low, spiky volume the math flips: a flat $19/mo plan with no per-message cost ties the cheapest phone line and undercuts every 500-credit tier you'll never fill — while pay-per-segment plans sit just behind.
A two-truck HVAC shop sending appointment reminders, “tech is 20 minutes out” pings, and the occasional review request doesn’t text in bulk — it texts maybe eight to twelve customers on a busy day, call it 250 to 300 messages a month. At that volume the standard business-texting pricing model works against you, because almost every credit-based vendor sells a flat base that includes a 500-credit allowance you will never come close to using. You’d be renting 500 credits to send 250 texts.
So the honest answer is: stop buying allowances and buy only what you send — or buy a flat line cheap enough that the allowance doesn’t matter. At 250 texts a month the lowest real number on the board isn’t a metered plan at all. It’s a $19/mo flat plan with no per-message cost, and it’s matched dollar-for-dollar by a flat phone line at the same price.
- Text-Em-All, Monthly: from $19/mo flat, priced by contact-group size, with no per-message cost for messaging your groups. At 250 texts that’s $19.00/mo — nothing metered on top. No carrier surcharges or per-user/number fees.
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone), Starter: $19/user/mo ($15 annual), one number, unlimited US/Canada texts and calls, no per-message metering. For 250 texts that’s a flat $19.00/mo — the same headline, a different kind of product (a business phone line, not a campaign tool).
- Avochato, Pay as You Go: $0 base + $0.08 per segment (US/CA), no platform fee at all. 250 texts = $20.00/mo; 300 = $24.00. Five user seats are included.
- Text-Em-All, pay-as-you-go credits: $0 base, 9 cents per credit, credits never expire. 250 texts = $22.50/mo; 300 = $27.00.
- Textla, Starter: $25/mo base + $0.01/SMS (US), carrier fees folded in. 250 texts = $27.50/mo; 300 = $28.00. Drop to annual and the base falls to $19/mo (so $21.50 at 250 texts).
Why the 500-credit plans cost more to do less
Here’s the same 250-text month priced against the bundled-credit tiers an HVAC owner would otherwise be quoted, alongside the flat and per-message options.
| Vendor / plan | Base | What 250 texts costs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text-Em-All — Monthly | $19 | $19.00 | flat, no per-message cost, no surcharges |
| Quo — Starter | $19 | $19.00 | flat phone line, unlimited US/CA texts + calls |
| Avochato — Pay as You Go | $0 | $20.00 | $0.08/segment, no platform fee, 5 seats |
| Text-Em-All — Credits | $0 | $22.50 | 9¢/credit, never expire |
| Sakari — Starter | $25 | $25.00 | entry slider tier (~12,500 segments) |
| Salesmsg — 500 Messages | $25 | $25+ | +10DLC: $4.50 one-time brand, $1.50–$10/mo campaign |
| Textla — Starter | $25 | $27.50 | $0.01/SMS, carrier fees included |
| SlickText — Starter | $29 | $29 | 500 credits, ~250 wasted |
| EZ Texting — Launch | $25 | $30 | +$5/mo telecom fee on this tier |
| Textedly — Basic | $29 | $37 | 500 msgs, +$8/mo telecom surcharge |
| SimpleTexting — 500 Credits | $39 | $39 | 500 credits, ~250 wasted |
The two $19 flat options at the top — Text-Em-All’s Monthly plan and Quo’s Starter — set the floor: neither meters a single message, so 250 texts costs exactly the base. Just behind them, the pure pay-per-segment plans (Avochato at $20, Text-Em-All credits at $22.50) charge only for what you actually send. Everything from the 500-credit tiers down is a flat fee for an allowance you half-use. Salesmsg’s 500 Messages tier matches Textla’s $25 sticker and bundles a number plus calling, but its 10DLC campaign registration adds $1.50–$10/mo on top, so the real floor sits above the headline. EZ Texting’s Launch plan is also $25, but a $5/mo telecom fee — charged on Launch specifically, waived on higher tiers — pushes it to $30 before a single feature difference matters. Textedly’s Basic is $29 but carries an $8/mo telecom surcharge on every paid plan, landing at $37. SlickText ($29) and SimpleTexting ($39) are clean, capable products, but you’re paying for 500 credits to send 250.
The pattern holds further up the ladder, which is the tell: at EZ Texting, all three SMB tiers (Launch $25, Boost $75, Scale $125) bundle the same 500 credits — the extra money buys features, not headroom. A low-volume HVAC shop needs neither.
The two products tied at the bottom — and how they differ
Two very different plans land at exactly $19/mo for this workload, and the right pick depends on what the shop actually wants the number to do.
Text-Em-All’s Monthly plan is a texting tool: its $19 entry tier is priced by how many contacts you keep in a group, not by how many messages you fire, so a small reminder/review-request list pays a flat $19 with nothing metered on top and no carrier surcharges. That makes it the cheapest genuine texting platform on this board at 250 messages — a dollar under Avochato’s metered $20.
Quo (formerly OpenPhone) is a business phone line, not a marketing-texting tool. Its $19/user/mo Starter ($15 annual) gives one number with unlimited two-way US/Canada texts and calls — genuinely useful for a dispatcher fielding “are you on your way” texts. But it doesn’t carry the keyword/broadcast/contact-list machinery a campaign tool does, and bulk review-request blasts aren’t its model.
So the tie is real on price but not on fit: if the shop wants one number that rings and texts and never meters, Quo is the cheapest line. If it wants a texting platform that won’t charge per message, Text-Em-All’s $19 Monthly is the cheapest that fits — and Avochato’s 8-cent-per-segment Pay as You Go is the cheapest plan that meters purely by usage, at $20.
How to read this
For 250–300 spiky texts a month, the cheapest options are a two-way tie at $19/mo flat — Text-Em-All’s Monthly plan (no per-message cost) and Quo’s Starter (unlimited phone line) — with the pure pay-per-segment plans, Avochato at $20.00 ($0 base, 8 cents a segment) and Text-Em-All credits at $22.50, sitting just behind. Among the priced vendors shown here, every one of these beats every 500-credit bundle — SlickText $29, EZ Texting $30, Textedly $37, SimpleTexting $39 — because those bundles charge you for capacity a small shop won’t touch. The split between the two $19 plans is fit, not price: Text-Em-All is the texting platform, Quo is the unlimited phone-and-text line. One nuance on compliance: among the priced vendors here, several market HIPAA-compliant texting but don’t publish BAA terms, and Avochato is the only one of them that names a BAA — offered for HIPAA handling on its Custom tier — so if HVAC-customer data ever needs that, the metered price leader at least has a documented path to it. (Textline also offers BAAs, but its pricing is quote-only and isn’t on this board.)