Guide · Business Texting
Two business-texting vendors actually let an agent call and text leads from one number
Most SMS-for-SMB tools text only — Quo and Salesmsg are the two in our dataset that put calling on the very same line, and they price it in opposite ways.
A real estate agent’s lead lives on one number. The buyer who texted “is this still available?” at 9pm is the same person you call back at 9am, and splitting that thread across a texting app and a separate phone line is how follow-ups die. So the practical question isn’t “what’s the best texting tool” — it’s which of these tools will also call from the line your leads already have. In our business-texting dataset, exactly two do: Quo, at $19 per user a month with unlimited calls and texts to the US and Canada on each user’s number, and Salesmsg, at $25 a month for 500 message credits with calling on the same number included. Every other vendor we priced — SimpleTexting, EZ Texting, Textedly, SlickText, Heymarket, Avochato, Sakari, Textla, Text-Em-All — bundles SMS credits or per-segment messaging and stops there. No calling on the line.
That leaves a genuine choice rather than a default, because the two take opposite shapes.
| Quo (Starter) | Quo (Business) | Salesmsg (500) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| List price | $19/user/mo | $33/user/mo | $25/mo |
| Annual | $15/user/mo | $23/user/mo | 2 months free (~17%) |
| Texts | Unlimited (US/CA) | Unlimited (US/CA) | 500 credits/mo |
| Calls on the number | Unlimited (US/CA) | Unlimited (US/CA) | Included |
| AI call summaries | — | Yes | — |
| Extra number | +$5/mo | +$5/mo | +$5/mo |
Quo: a phone that also texts
Quo (the rebrand of OpenPhone) is built calls-first. The $19/user Starter plan gives each agent one number with unlimited texts and calls to the US and Canada — there’s no credit allowance to meter and no per-message overage on standard volume, which is the cleanest fit for a high-touch agent who texts and dials all day. The annual rate drops it to $15/user/mo (about 21% off).
The catch for a solo agent is the feature you’d most want. AI call summaries and transcripts — the thing that turns a missed-call voicemail into a logged lead note — live on the $33/user Business tier, not Starter. Business also adds the HubSpot and Salesforce sync, IVR, and call recording, and its annual price falls to $23/user/mo (~30% off). So the honest read is that Quo’s headline $19 is the texting-and-calling line, and the AI layer a real estate team usually wants costs $14/user more per month at list.
Salesmsg: a texting inbox that added the phone
Salesmsg comes from the other direction. Its $25/mo entry plan is a 500-credit texting product — one credit per standard 160-character SMS — that happens to include calling on the same number, plus one free local or toll-free number and one seat. That’s the structural difference: Quo doesn’t ration messages and Salesmsg does. Run past 500 texts in a month and you’re paying about 4.0 cents per extra credit (falling to 3.10 cents on higher tiers), and the next published step up is $49 for 1,000 credits. Extra seats are +$10/mo and extra numbers +$5/mo.
For an agent whose volume is bursty — a listing goes live, fifty inquiries land in two days — that metering matters. For one whose texting is steady but not heavy, 500 credits plus calling for $25 is a tidy single line item.
Which one, and the compliance footnote
If the workload is one agent texting and calling constantly, Quo’s $19 Starter is the cheaper unlimited line and the one to beat; if you need the call notes written for you, the comparison is really Quo Business at $33 versus Salesmsg at $25, and the $8 gap buys Quo’s AI summaries and unlimited messaging against Salesmsg’s 500-credit ceiling.
One caveat real estate teams handling sensitive client data should note: neither names a signed BAA on its pricing page. Quo lists “HIPAA ready” as a cross-plan feature but routes BAA terms to sales, and Salesmsg states no HIPAA terms at all. In our dataset the vendors that pair an explicit HIPAA claim with an available BAA — Avochato and Textline — are both texting-only, so neither answers the call-and-text-on-one-number question. For most agents that footnote is moot; for anyone moving health-adjacent or regulated data over the line, it’s the first thing to confirm before the price. As always, the workload drives the answer, and we publish the source behind every figure above.