Guide · Business Texting
What per-user texting tools cost for a team of 5 — and why the per-seat ones get expensive fast
Price the same five-person texting line across the three vendors that bill by the seat, and the spread runs from $95/mo to $995/mo before a single message is sent.
Three vendors in this category bill texting strictly by the user seat — Heymarket, Quo, and Avochato — and a five-person team is exactly the size where that model splits the field wide open. On Heymarket’s Standard plan ($49/user/mo, billed annually, two-user minimum), five seats is $245/mo — and that is before any messages, because Heymarket meters SMS/MMS at $0.03/segment on top of the seat fee. Quo’s Starter plan ($19/user/mo) is $95/mo for the same five seats with unlimited US/CA texts included, no per-message meter. Same headcount, same job, and the per-seat sticker is 2.6× apart before usage even enters the math.
Here is what five seats costs across the per-seat vendors, cheapest first, using each vendor’s published monthly list price.
| Vendor | Plan | Per-user/mo | 5 seats/mo | Per-message |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quo | Starter | $19 | $95 | Unlimited US/CA |
| Quo | Business | $33 | $165 | Unlimited US/CA |
| Quo | Scale | $47 | $235 | Unlimited US/CA |
| Heymarket | Standard | $49 | $245 | +$0.03/segment |
| Heymarket | Plus | $99 | $495 | +$0.03/segment |
| Heymarket | Pro | $199 | $995 | +$0.03/segment |
(Quo’s per-user prices are the monthly rate; on annual it drops to $15/$23/$35 per user, or $75/$115/$175 for five. Heymarket’s $49/$99/$199 are already the annual rate, the only one its live page publishes.)
The hidden multiplier is the metered segment
The seat fee is only half of Heymarket’s bill. At $0.03/segment, a team that sends 5,000 outbound segments a month adds $150 on top of the $245 Standard base — call it $395/mo all-in for five seats and moderate volume. Quo’s Starter, at a flat $95/mo, carries that same 5,000 messages at no marginal cost, because unlimited US/CA texts are bundled into the seat. That is the structural reason the per-seat gap widens with usage rather than narrowing: one model meters the work, the other doesn’t.
Avochato: per-seat, but the seats are free first
Avochato is the third per-seat vendor, and it inverts the pattern by including five users in its base and charging $42/mo only for the sixth seat onward. So a team of exactly five pays no seat premium at all — the cost is the platform fee plus metered segments. On Pay as You Go ($0 base + $0.08/segment), five agents sending 2,000 segments is $160/mo; the same volume on Standard ($210/mo base + $0.03/segment) is $210 + $60 = $270/mo. Avochato’s own page pegs the crossover at roughly 2,000 segments — below it, pay-as-you-go wins; above it, the $210 base earns back its keep through the cheaper rate. Avochato is also the only vendor of the three to state both HIPAA support and an available signed BAA on its plans, which matters more than price to a healthcare buyer.
What “cheapest for five” actually means
If the question is purely the lowest five-seat number with messages included, Quo Starter at $95/mo is the floor among per-seat vendors — and nothing else in this trio comes close at that volume, because Avochato’s zero-base plan still meters every segment and Heymarket meters on top of a seat fee five times Quo’s. Quo lists “HIPAA ready” across all plans, though its BAA terms route to sales.
But the per-seat lens flatters Quo for a reason worth naming: most of this category does not bill by the seat. SimpleTexting bundles three user seats into its $39/mo base (extra seats $20/mo), so five seats is $79/mo plus 500 message credits. EZ Texting’s Launch is $25/mo with one seat at $10/mo each after, landing five seats at $65/mo plus 500 credits. Salesmsg’s $25 entry plan includes one seat at $10/mo each beyond, making five seats $65/mo plus 500 credits and a bundled calling-and-texting number. Those are credit-metered, not unlimited — but for a five-person front desk sending a few hundred messages a month, they undercut every per-seat option on the table.
The takeaway isn’t that per-seat pricing is a trap; it’s that it only makes sense when every seat is a heavy two-way texter. For a team of five where two or three people do most of the messaging, a seat-bundled credit plan is cheaper, and Quo’s unlimited model is the per-seat exception that behaves like a flat plan. We publish the seat counts, the per-segment rates, and the source page behind every figure so you can re-run the math against your own headcount and volume.