Guide · Business Texting
For a law-firm intake line shared by several staff, the texting choice is a compliance question first and a seat-math question second
A firm where paralegals and attorneys all answer one number needs a multi-agent shared inbox with a signed BAA — and in this dataset only two vendors publish both, which reshapes how you read the seat pricing.
A law firm texting line is not a marketing list. It is a shared intake inbox where a paralegal, an associate, and the attorney of record might all reply to the same client from the same number — and where the conversation is privileged and often subject to a Business Associate Agreement. That second fact does most of the filtering. Of the seventeen vendors in this dataset, only two publish both HIPAA support and an available BAA: Textline and Avochato. Several others (Heymarket, SimpleTexting, SlickText, Quo, Text Request) market HIPAA-compliant texting but do not name BAA terms on their live pages. So the honest first cut is narrow, and the seat math comes second.
The two-vendor compliant shortlist
Textline is built for exactly this shape: a shared inbox with multiple named agents. Its Essentials tier includes 3 agents and 600 message credits a month, with extra agents at $50/agent; Pro includes 5 agents and 2,000 credits, with extra agents at $70/agent. A three-to-five-person intake desk fits inside the included-agent count without buying a single add-on seat. Overage credits run $0.03 each (or $0.04 on backup), 10DLC registration is $15/mo, and annual billing takes 20% off. One caveat the data is explicit about: Textline does not print the monthly base price for Essentials or Pro on its live page — it publishes the structure and routes the base figure to sales — so plan that into your quote request rather than treating any third-party number as gospel.
Avochato is the other BAA vendor. Its Standard plan is $210/mo and bundles 5 users, then meters messages at $0.03/segment, with each additional user at $42/mo. There is also a $0 pay-as-you-go tier at $0.08/segment (also 5 users), which is cheaper only below roughly 2,000 segments a month — above that, the $210 base earns back its keep by halving the per-segment rate from $0.08 to $0.03. For a five-person firm whose privilege concerns rule out the no-BAA options, Avochato’s bundled-five-seats model is the one that doesn’t charge per head until you exceed the team you already have.
What the seat math looks like
| Vendor | Multi-agent model | Five-staff monthly base | BAA published? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Textline (Pro) | 5 agents included | base not published; +$70/agent above 5 | Yes |
| Textline (Essentials) | 3 agents included | base + $100 (2 extra agents × $50) | Yes |
| Avochato (Standard) | 5 users included | $210 + $0.03/segment | Yes |
| Salesmsg ($25 tier) | 1 seat + $10/extra | $65 ($25 + 4 × $10) | No |
| Heymarket (Standard) | per-user, min 2 | $245 (5 × $49 annual) + $0.03/segment | No |
The contrast is the whole story. Salesmsg is the cheapest way to put five people on one number — $25 for the first seat plus four extra agents at $10 each is $65/mo, and it bundles calling on the same number — but it publishes no HIPAA or BAA terms, which for privileged client data is disqualifying rather than merely cheaper. Heymarket charges per user with a two-seat minimum, so five staff is 5 × $49 = $245/mo on annual billing before a single message, with SMS metered at $0.03/segment on top; its HIPAA enablement is real but the BAA isn’t named, leaving it a near-miss for a firm that needs the signed agreement in hand.
How to read this
For a marketing blast, Salesmsg’s $65 would win and the conversation would end. For a law firm, it can’t, because the binding constraint isn’t price — it’s whether the vendor will sign a BAA, and only Textline and Avochato publish that they will. Between them the choice is structural, not numeric: Textline gives you a purpose-built shared inbox with 3 agents (Essentials) or 5 agents (Pro) included and per-agent expansion at $50–$70, while Avochato gives you five bundled users at $210/mo plus $0.03/segment with no per-seat charge until you outgrow the team. A small two-or-three-person intake desk leans toward Textline’s Essentials and its included agents; a five-person desk that texts heavily leans toward Avochato’s flat five-seat base. Ask both for the unpublished number — Textline’s Essentials/Pro base is sales-gated — fix it against your real agent count and monthly segment volume, and the cheaper-looking per-seat vendors stop being relevant the moment the word “privileged” enters the room.