Guide · Business Texting
The sticker price on a business texting plan is rarely the line on your invoice
Telecom surcharges, 10DLC registration fees, per-segment overage, and per-seat add-ons sit on top of the advertised monthly base — and on the cheapest plans they're the largest single distortion.
The advertised number on a business texting plan is the base subscription. It is almost never what posts to your card. Three categories of add-on ride on top: a flat telecom surcharge (Textedly charges $8/mo on every paid plan; EZ Texting charges $5/mo on its $25 Launch tier, waived above it), a near-mandatory 10DLC registration fee to message US numbers at all (from Salesmsg’s $4.50 one-time brand plus $1.50–$10/mo per campaign up to Heymarket’s $10/mo and Textline’s $15/mo), and per-unit metering — extra credits, extra seats, extra numbers — that the sticker quietly excludes.
On the cheapest plans, the surcharge is not a rounding error. Textedly’s Basic tier advertises $29/mo; the $8 telecom surcharge is 27.6% on top, lifting the real floor to $37/mo before you send a message over your 500-credit allowance. EZ Texting’s $5 Telecom Fee on the $25 Launch plan is 20% on top — and it is the cleanest example of how these fees work, because EZ Texting waives it entirely on its $75 Boost and $125 Scale tiers. The fee isn’t a cost of carrying traffic. It’s a cost of being on the entry plan.
The surcharge, plan by plan
| Vendor / plan | Advertised base | Add-on the sticker hides | Real monthly floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Textedly Basic | $29/mo | +$8 telecom surcharge | $37/mo |
| EZ Texting Launch | $25/mo | +$5 Telecom Fee | $30/mo |
| EZ Texting Boost | $75/mo | surcharge waived | $75/mo |
| Salesmsg 500 Messages | $25/mo | +$4.50 one-time + $1.50–$10/mo 10DLC | $26.50–$35/mo |
| Heymarket Standard | $49/user/mo | +$10/mo 10DLC + $0.03/segment | $108/mo at 2-user min |
10DLC: the fee you pay whether or not the vendor names it
Every vendor here routes US business texts over the 10DLC standard, and the carriers — not the software — levy a registration charge. Some vendors surface it; some bury it. Salesmsg is unusually transparent: $4.50 one-time for brand registration plus $1.50–$10/mo per campaign, stated on the pricing page. Heymarket lists $10/mo per campaign on top of a per-seat model that already meters SMS at $0.03/segment. Textline, whose base price is quote-gated, still publishes a $15/mo 10DLC line. Read together, the same regulatory fee ranges from under five dollars one-time to fifteen dollars every month depending on whose page you’re reading — and only the vendors that print it are doing you a favor.
Per-unit fees are where the bundle leaks
The monthly base buys a fixed allowance, and the moment you exceed it the meter starts. SimpleTexting bundles 3 seats and one number into its $39/mo 500-credit plan, then charges +$20/mo per extra seat, +$10/mo per extra local number (plus a $4 one-time setup), and 5.5 cents per credit over the allowance. Salesmsg adds +$10/mo per seat and +$5/mo per extra number. Heymarket’s model is the most exposed: it is priced per user with a 2-user minimum, so the advertised $49 is really $98/mo before the $10 10DLC and the $0.03/segment metering land on top — a real floor near $108/mo for the entry tier.
The vendors that actually advertise the real number
Two in the dataset earn the comparison. Text-Em-All states plainly: “No added carrier surcharges or fees for users, numbers, or registration.” Textla folds carrier fees into a flat $0.01/SMS rate (Starter $25/mo, or $19/mo annual) and markets “zero hidden fees.” Both are the per-message exceptions that prove the category rule — when a vendor builds the surcharge into the unit price instead of bolting it on at checkout, the sticker and the invoice finally agree.
How to read this
The honest way to compare business texting plans is to add the surcharge to the base before you rank them. Textedly’s $29 is a $37 plan. EZ Texting’s $25 is a $30 plan on Launch and a flat $75 on Boost. Salesmsg’s $25 carries $4.50 once and up to $10/mo thereafter. Heymarket’s $49 is a two-seat $108 floor. None of these are deceptions — every figure is on the vendors’ own pages — but the cheapest-looking plan is consistently the one where the hidden share is largest, because surcharges are flat and small bases magnify them. Fix the workload, add the fees the sticker omits, and the order changes.