# Textline

> Textline is a business SMS platform built for support, sales, and operations teams, bundling a shared inbox across SMS, MMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram with announcements, keyword and time-based automations, NPS and CSAT surveys, shortcuts, and group messaging into fixed plans that include both agent seats and message credits; Essentials is $149 a month for three agents and 600 credits, Pro is $349 for five agents and 2,000 credits, and unusually for the category it bills inbound messages as well as outbound.

- Category: SMS Marketing (https://saastracker.org/categories/sms-marketing)
- Website: https://www.textline.com
- Starting price: $149 per month for three agents and 600 message credits
- Free plan: No
- Free trial: Free trial available with self-serve signup
- Founded: 2015, HQ: San Francisco, California, Ownership: Privately held and independent
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/textline

## Overview

Textline was founded in San Francisco in 2015 by Alan Braverman and Mark Lilien, and has stayed a focused, independent business texting company rather than expanding into an omnichannel suite or being folded into a CPaaS group. The customer base is service-heavy: healthcare, hospitality, construction, retail, legal, insurance, property management, and staffing, plus a long tail of operations teams who need several people answering the same number without passing a phone around.

The job it does is general business texting and two-way conversation, weighted toward support rather than marketing. That weighting shows in what it builds. Announcements exist for broadcasting to a large group, but the depth is in conversation handling: claiming messages, transferring threads, auto-routing inbound traffic, resolving conversations like tickets, shortcuts that turn a repeated answer into one keystroke, and NPS, CSAT, and custom text surveys that close the loop on whether the interaction actually helped. That last piece is rare. Most SMS platforms will send you a message; very few will measure how the customer felt about it.

Compliance and security are the second reason it wins deals. Textline is SOC 2 certified, HIPAA compliant, TCPA and CCPA aligned, and registered with The Campaign Registry and CTIA. Combined with custom user roles on the Pro tier, that is a package that gets approved by clinics, insurers, and law firms in a way most small-business texting tools do not. It is also why the price is high relative to a credit-based marketing platform: you are buying a system of record for regulated conversations, not a bulk sender.

Pricing is where buyers need to slow down. Essentials is $149 a month for three agents, one number, and 600 message credits. Pro is $349 for five agents, two numbers, and 2,000 credits, adding unlimited conversation history, custom user roles, custom surveys, the Salesforce integration, time-based automations, advanced security, priority support, and a dedicated success manager. Extra credits are $0.03 as an add-on or $0.04 as backup credits, and Textline restructured its pricing in 2025. The detail that catches people out is that inbound messages are billed too, where most competitors charge only for outbound. A busy two-way support inbox therefore burns its allowance roughly twice as fast as a first-time buyer models.

## How it works

1. You start a free trial and pick a plan. Essentials and Pro are self-serve; Enterprise requires a demo booking. Seats and credits arrive bundled rather than priced separately, so a plan is a single monthly number before overage.

2. You provision or port a number. Essentials includes one number, Pro includes two, and you can text-enable an existing landline, which is a common reason service businesses choose Textline over a platform that hands you a new number nobody recognizes.

3. You complete A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration before sending at volume, or toll-free verification if you use a toll-free number. Brand registration runs about $4, campaign vetting from roughly $15, and monthly campaign fees $1.50 to $10 by use case, all set by The Campaign Registry and passed through. Toll-free verification is free but takes one to five business days and can run to a fortnight, and unverified toll-free traffic is blocked outright by the aggregator.

4. Conversations land in the shared inbox across SMS, MMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. Agents claim, transfer, and resolve threads like tickets, auto-routing rules put inbound traffic in front of the right queue, and shortcuts insert canned answers without retyping.

5. Announcements handle outbound to a group, with scheduling. Automations cover auto-replies, scheduled messages, and triggers on time, date, or keyword, with time-based automation reserved for the Pro tier, which is also what you use to respect quiet hours across time zones.

6. Surveys close the loop. NPS, CSAT, and on Pro fully custom surveys go out by text after a conversation, and the results feed the analytics that track response rates, agent performance, and team efficiency.

## Best for

Support, service, and operations teams of three to twenty agents that need many people working one number with ticket-style conversation handling, especially healthcare, insurance, legal, property, and construction businesses that need HIPAA and SOC 2 and want to measure satisfaction on the same channel they answer on.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone whose primary use is outbound marketing volume; at $149 for 600 credits you are paying about 25 cents a message on the entry plan, which is an order of magnitude worse than a credit-based marketing platform.
- Ecommerce brands measuring SMS in attributed revenue; there is no cart data model, no order attribution, and no subscriber acquisition tooling.
- Small teams on a tight budget; $149 a month is the floor and there is no cheap entry tier, so a two-person shop is overbuying by a wide margin.
- Businesses that want WhatsApp; Textline covers SMS, webchat, Facebook, and Instagram, but WhatsApp is not part of the published channel set, which rules it out for international consumer support.
- Developers who want a messaging API as the product; there is an API and webhooks, but the value here is the application, and a CPaaS provider will move messages for a hundredth of the price.

## Features

### Shared inbox and conversation handling

The heart of the product, and closer to a helpdesk than to a texting app.

- **Shared team inbox**: SMS, MMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram in one queue rather than one device per channel.
- **Claim and transfer**: An agent claims a conversation so nobody double-answers, and hands it to a colleague with context intact.
- **Auto-routing**: Inbound messages are routed to the right department or queue automatically instead of landing in one undifferentiated pile.
- **Resolve conversations**: Threads are resolved like tickets, which is what makes response and resolution metrics meaningful rather than decorative.
- **Shortcuts**: Saved message templates inserted with a keystroke, which is the single biggest time saver for a desk answering the same twelve questions all day.
- **Group messaging**: One shared thread with several contacts, used by construction, property, and logistics teams coordinating a job across parties.
- **Text-enable an existing landline**: Customers text the number already printed on your door and your invoices, rather than a new number they will not recognize.

### Outbound and automation

Broadcasting and rules, deliberately simpler than a marketing platform's.

- **Announcements**: Send a message to a large group of contacts at once, with scheduling, for closures, outages, promotions, and status updates.
- **Auto-replies**: Immediate acknowledgement on inbound, including after-hours coverage that sets a realistic expectation.
- **Scheduled messages**: Queue a send for a specific time, which is also the practical way to respect quiet-hours rules across time zones.
- **Keyword triggers**: Inbound keywords fire a workflow, subscribe a contact, or route the conversation.
- **Time-based automations**: Trigger on elapsed time or date rather than only on a message arriving. This is a Pro-tier feature.
- **Automatic opt-out handling**: STOP and equivalent replies unsubscribe the contact and are enforced on later sends, which the carriers require.

### Surveys and analytics

The feature set almost no other SMS platform in this price band ships.

- **NPS surveys**: Net promoter scoring delivered by text, where response rates run far ahead of email surveys.
- **CSAT surveys**: Per-conversation satisfaction measurement, so agent quality is measured rather than assumed.
- **Custom surveys**: Arbitrary question sets on the Pro tier, for post-service, post-delivery, or post-appointment feedback.
- **Team and agent analytics**: Response rates, resolution metrics, agent performance, and team efficiency reporting built into the product.
- **Unlimited conversation history**: Pro removes the history limit, which matters when a conversation from eighteen months ago is the evidence in a dispute.

### Compliance and security

The reason regulated businesses shortlist it.

- **SOC 2 certification**: Independently audited, which is normally the first question a procurement team asks.
- **HIPAA compliance**: Available for healthcare customers, which combined with roles and routing is why clinics and providers use it for patient coordination.
- **TCPA and CCPA alignment**: Consent capture, opt-out enforcement, and data handling built around the US regulatory regime rather than retrofitted.
- **Campaign Registry and CTIA registered**: A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration handled through the platform rather than left to the customer to figure out.
- **Custom user roles**: Pro-tier granular permissions controlling who can broadcast, who can see which conversations, and who can change settings.
- **Advanced security controls**: Pro adds the security configuration that regulated buyers require before they will approve a texting channel at all.

### Integrations

Built to sit beside a CRM, a helpdesk, and a phone system.

- **Salesforce**: Reserved for the Pro tier; logs texting activity against the record the rest of the company works from.
- **HubSpot and Pipedrive**: CRM sync for sales-adjacent texting so conversations are visible on the deal.
- **Zendesk and Freshdesk**: Helpdesk connections so a text thread and a ticket are the same event rather than two.
- **Slack**: Internal notification and collaboration where the team already works.
- **Talkdesk and Aircall**: Voice platform connections for teams whose customers switch between calling and texting.
- **Zapier, API, and webhooks**: Available from the Essentials tier, which is unusual since most vendors gate API access to their top plan.

## Use cases

- **Multi-provider medical practice**: Patients text the office number constantly, three staff need to answer it, and the compliance officer will not approve a consumer messaging app for anything touching patient information. Outcome: HIPAA compliance and SOC 2 satisfy the compliance review, auto-routing splits scheduling from billing, and CSAT surveys after each interaction give the practice manager an actual quality signal.
- **Construction firm coordinating subcontractors**: A job involves a site supervisor, two subs, and a client, and coordination happens across personal phones with no record when a dispute arises. Outcome: Group messaging puts every party in one thread on the company number, shortcuts cover standard dispatch messages, and unlimited history on Pro means the record exists when someone contests what was agreed.
- **Insurance agency with an existing landline**: The office number is on every policy document and every billboard, and clients keep texting it into a void because the landline cannot receive texts. Outcome: Textline text-enables the existing landline, so the number nobody wants to change starts working as a two-way channel with several agents answering it.
- **Property management company measuring service quality**: Maintenance requests come in by text and nobody knows whether tenants are satisfied until renewals fail. Outcome: Custom surveys fire after each resolved maintenance thread, agent analytics show who is closing well, and NPS trends give the operator a leading indicator instead of a lagging one.

## Pricing

Fixed monthly plans that bundle agent seats, phone numbers, and message credits together, with additional credits sold as add-ons and carrier fees passed through.

- **Essentials**: $149 per month. 3 agents included; 1 phone number; 600 message credits per month; NPS and CSAT surveys; Standard integrations plus API and webhooks; Admin and agent roles.
- **Pro**: $349 per month. 5 agents included; 2 phone numbers; 2,000 message credits per month; Unlimited conversation history; Custom user roles and custom surveys; Salesforce integration and time-based automations; Advanced security, priority support, and a dedicated success manager. The tier where Textline becomes a system of record rather than a shared inbox.
- **Enterprise**: Custom quoted. Everything in Pro; Flexible implementation; Personalized account planning; Custom seat and credit configuration. Requires a booked demo; the only tier that is not self-serve.

Add-ons:

- Add-on message credits ($0.03 per credit): Purchased in advance to extend your monthly allowance.
- Backup message credits ($0.04 per credit): The safety net rate when you exhaust both plan and add-on credits, and the most expensive way to send a text on this platform.

Billing notes:

- Inbound messages consume credits as well as outbound. Most competitors bill only outbound, so a busy two-way inbox burns its allowance roughly twice as fast as a first-time buyer models. This is the single most important line on the invoice to understand.
- Essentials at $149 for 600 credits works out to about 25 cents per credit if you use exactly the allowance, which is why Textline is a poor broadcasting tool and a reasonable conversation tool. Pro at $349 for 2,000 credits improves to about 17 cents.
- Add-on credits are $0.03 and backup credits are $0.04, so overage is far cheaper per message than the bundled allowance implies. Size your plan for seats and features, not for message volume.
- One credit is one SMS segment of up to 160 characters. A single emoji or curly quote switches the message to unicode encoding, cutting the per-segment budget to 70 characters, so a short message with an emoji can cost three credits instead of one. MMS costs more again.
- Annual billing is reported to save roughly 10 to 20 percent against monthly, so confirm the annual figure if you can commit.
- Textline restructured its pricing during 2025 and publishes an explanation in its help center. Check the current plan comparison page rather than relying on older third-party reviews.
- Textline does not publish a credit rollover policy, so assume unused credits expire monthly and get any exception in writing.
- US carrier pass-through of roughly $0.003 per segment and A2P 10DLC campaign fees of $1.50 to $10 a month sit on top of credit costs, as with every US SMS vendor.
- Seats are bundled rather than sold individually at the published tiers, so a fourth agent on Essentials or a sixth on Pro means either an upgrade or a conversation about additional seats.

Value assessment: Textline is expensive per message and defensible per team. Nobody should buy it to send campaigns: at roughly 25 cents a credit on the entry plan, a 10,000-message broadcast is a fantasy here and a $60 line item on a credit-based marketing platform. What you are actually paying for is a support desk that happens to run on SMS, with ticket-style claiming and transfer, auto-routing, shortcuts, agent analytics, unlimited history, and text-delivered NPS and CSAT surveys that essentially nothing else in this price band offers. Add SOC 2 and HIPAA and the price starts looking like helpdesk software rather than texting software, which is the correct comparison. The structural warning is inbound billing: if your team receives as much as it sends, and support teams do, your effective allowance is half what the plan says. Model that before you choose a tier, and remember that add-on credits at $0.03 are much cheaper than the bundled rate, so sizing down and topping up is often the right move.

## Strengths

- Conversation handling built like a helpdesk: claim, transfer, auto-route, and resolve, with agent and team analytics that make those metrics real.
- NPS, CSAT, and custom text surveys are shipped in the product, which almost no competing SMS platform at this price offers.
- SOC 2 certified, HIPAA compliant, TCPA and CCPA aligned, and CTIA and Campaign Registry registered, which is a package that clears regulated procurement.
- Text-enables an existing landline, so the number already printed on your invoices and vehicles becomes a two-way channel.
- API, webhooks, and standard integrations are available from the entry Essentials tier rather than gated to the top plan, which is unusually generous.
- Group messaging with several contacts in one thread, which construction, property, and logistics teams use constantly and most rivals implement badly or not at all.
- Independent and focused since 2015, with no acquisition or shutdown history in a category that has seen both.

## Limitations

- Inbound messages consume credits, which effectively halves the usable allowance for any genuinely two-way team and is easy to miss during evaluation.
- The $149 floor is high, with no small or free tier, so businesses under three agents are structurally overpaying.
- Per-message cost is the worst in this batch for broadcasting, making it unsuitable as a marketing channel at any real volume.
- No WhatsApp support, which rules it out for international consumer-facing support where WhatsApp is the default channel.
- Key features are held back to Pro at $349, including custom roles, custom surveys, Salesforce, time-based automations, and unlimited conversation history.
- No published rollover policy for unused credits, and pricing changed during 2025, so older reviews and quotes are unreliable.

## Comparisons

- **Textline vs Heymarket**: The closest peer. Heymarket separates seats ($49 per user per month on annual billing, two-seat minimum) from credits (about $0.03 each) and carries far more channels, including WhatsApp and Apple Messages for Business. Textline bundles seats and credits into a fixed plan, bills inbound as well as outbound, and ships NPS and CSAT surveys plus ticket-style resolution that Heymarket does not. Choose Textline for a support desk that wants to measure satisfaction; choose Heymarket for channel breadth and CRM sync.
- **Textline vs Avochato**: Avochato includes five users on every tier and charges $0.03 per segment with no platform fee below roughly 2,000 segments a month, or $210 a month for the same rate at higher volume. Textline starts at $149 with three agents and a credit allowance that inbound traffic also consumes. For a five-person team with modest volume, Avochato is dramatically cheaper. Textline earns the difference only if you need surveys, ticket-style resolution, and its compliance package.
- **Textline vs Salesmsg**: Salesmsg is a sales-team texting product with calling attached and deep HubSpot and ActiveCampaign automation. Textline is a support and operations product with surveys, routing, and HIPAA. If texting is how your reps advance deals, Salesmsg fits the workflow; if texting is how your team resolves requests and you need to prove service quality, Textline is built for that and Salesmsg is not.
- **Textline vs SimpleTexting**: SimpleTexting starts at $39 a month for 500 credits with three seats included, rolls unused credits over, and publishes its cost arithmetic in detail. Textline starts at $149 and bills inbound as well as outbound. SimpleTexting is far better value for a mixed campaign-and-reply workload; Textline is the better product only when compliance, routing, and surveys are genuine requirements rather than nice-to-haves.
- **Textline vs Textmagic**: TextMagic is pay-as-you-go business texting with strong international coverage and no monthly floor. Textline is a fixed monthly platform with a team inbox, surveys, and HIPAA. If your volume is irregular, international, or one-directional, TextMagic costs a fraction as much. If several agents share one US number all day and you need a compliance story, TextMagic will not do the job at any price.

## Implementation

- Setup time: A day to get a team texting on a new number, but plan one to three weeks of calendar time overall, since A2P 10DLC registration or toll-free verification sits in the middle and porting or text-enabling an existing landline adds its own timeline.
- Learning curve: Low for agents, who see a familiar inbox. Moderate for administrators: auto-routing rules, custom roles on Pro, shortcuts, and survey design are the features you are paying for and they need deliberate configuration to be worth the money.
- Onboarding: Self-serve with a free trial on Essentials and Pro; Enterprise requires booking a demo. Pro includes priority support and a dedicated success manager, which is the practical reason larger teams choose it over Essentials plus add-on credits.
- Migration: Text-enabling an existing landline is the smoothest path and avoids a port entirely. If you do port a number, begin before cancelling the old service, since a number in transit cannot send. Import contacts with your original consent evidence rather than assuming a CSV carries TCPA consent. Because pricing changed during 2025, verify current plan contents against the vendor's own comparison page rather than an older quote.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web application, iOS app, Android app, API and webhooks
- API: API and webhooks are available from the Essentials tier, alongside Zapier and native connectors for CRM, helpdesk, and voice platforms.
- Compliance: SOC 2, HIPAA, TCPA, CCPA, CTIA registered, Campaign Registry registered, A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration
- Data residency: US-based infrastructure; no regional hosting options advertised.
- SSO: Advanced security controls including access management are a Pro-tier feature; confirm SSO specifics during procurement.
- Security notes: Custom user roles on Pro scope who can broadcast and who can see which conversations, unlimited conversation history preserves the record for disputes, and opt-out handling is enforced automatically on outbound sends. Request the current SOC 2 report and, for healthcare, the business associate agreement before go-live.

## Support

- Channels: Email support, In-app support, Priority support on Pro, Dedicated success manager on Pro
- Documentation: Help center at help.textline.com covering plans and pricing changes, 10DLC registration, routing, automations, surveys, and integrations.
- Community: No large public user forum; support is direct and success-managed at the Pro tier.

## Company

- Founded: 2015
- Founders: Alan Braverman, Mark Lilien
- Headquarters: San Francisco, California
- Ownership: Privately held and independent
- Employees: Not disclosed; a small independent team
- Funding: No significant disclosed venture funding; the company has operated independently since founding.

Timeline:

- 2015: Founded in San Francisco by Alan Braverman and Mark Lilien as a business texting platform for support and operations teams.
- 2018: Adds HIPAA compliance and advanced security controls, opening the healthcare, insurance, and legal segments.
- 2021: US carriers make A2P 10DLC registration mandatory; Textline registers with The Campaign Registry and handles brand and campaign submission for customers.
- 2023: Expands the shared inbox beyond SMS to webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, and adds group messaging for multi-party threads.
- 2025: Restructures pricing into Essentials at $149 and Pro at $349 with bundled agents, numbers, and credits, and publishes an explanation of the change in its help center.

## Integrations

Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Slack, Talkdesk, Aircall, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Business, Zapier, API and webhooks

## FAQ

### What is Textline?

Textline is a business SMS platform for support, sales, and operations teams. It combines a shared inbox across SMS, MMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram with ticket-style claiming and transfer, auto-routing, announcements, automations, shortcuts, group messaging, and NPS, CSAT, and custom text surveys, sold in fixed plans that bundle agent seats, numbers, and message credits.

### How much does Textline cost?

Essentials is $149 a month for three agents, one number, and 600 message credits. Pro is $349 a month for five agents, two numbers, and 2,000 credits, plus unlimited history, custom roles, custom surveys, Salesforce, time-based automations, and a dedicated success manager. Enterprise is quoted. Add-on credits are $0.03 and backup credits are $0.04. Annual billing is reported to save roughly 10 to 20 percent.

### Does Textline charge for incoming messages?

Yes, and it is the detail most buyers get wrong. Inbound messages consume credits as well as outbound, where most competitors bill only outbound. For a two-way support inbox that receives roughly as much as it sends, your effective allowance is about half the number printed on the plan. Model your credits against total conversation turns, not sends.

### How are message credits counted?

One credit is one SMS segment of up to 160 characters using standard GSM encoding. Insert a single emoji or curly quote and the message re-encodes as unicode, cutting the per-segment budget to 70 characters, so a 150-character message with one emoji becomes three segments and three credits. MMS consumes more again. This is a carrier rule rather than a Textline policy.

### Can Textline text-enable my existing business phone number?

Yes, and for many service businesses that is the main reason to choose it. The landline printed on your invoices, vehicles, and signage becomes a two-way texting number worked by a whole team, without customers having to learn a new number or you having to port anything.

### Is Textline HIPAA compliant?

Yes. Textline is SOC 2 certified and HIPAA compliant, aligned with TCPA and CCPA, and registered with both CTIA and The Campaign Registry. Combined with custom user roles on the Pro tier, that package is what gets it approved by clinics, insurers, and law firms. Request the current SOC 2 report and business associate agreement during procurement.

### Does Textline support WhatsApp?

No. The published channel set is SMS, MMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. If WhatsApp is important, which it usually is for international consumer support, look at Heymarket instead, which carries WhatsApp and Apple Messages for Business in the same inbox.

### Is Textline good for SMS marketing?

Not really. Announcements can broadcast to a group, but at roughly 25 cents per bundled credit on Essentials the economics are wrong by an order of magnitude compared with credit-based marketing platforms. Textline is a conversation and service tool that can announce, not a marketing platform that can converse.

### What does A2P 10DLC registration cost with Textline?

The fees come from The Campaign Registry and the carriers and are passed through: roughly $4 for brand registration, campaign vetting from about $15, and monthly campaign fees of $1.50 to $10 depending on use case, plus per-message carrier surcharges around $0.003 per US segment. Toll-free verification is free but takes one to five business days and sometimes longer, and unverified toll-free traffic is blocked by the aggregator.

### Who owns Textline?

Textline was founded in San Francisco in 2015 by Alan Braverman and Mark Lilien and remains privately held and independent with no significant disclosed venture funding. In a category where Zipwhip was acquired and shut down and several vendors have been absorbed into CPaaS groups, that continuity is worth something.

## Editorial verdict

Textline is helpdesk software that happens to run on text messages, and it should be priced and judged that way. For a team of three to twenty agents in healthcare, insurance, legal, property, or construction, the combination of ticket-style conversation handling, auto-routing, shortcuts, group threads, agent analytics, and text-delivered NPS and CSAT surveys is genuinely hard to assemble elsewhere, and SOC 2 plus HIPAA clears the procurement hurdle that stops most texting tools at the door. The ability to text-enable an existing landline closes more deals than any feature on the list. The reasons to walk away are equally clear: $149 is a high floor with nothing below it, inbound messages consume credits so your real allowance is half what it looks like, WhatsApp is absent, and the per-message economics make broadcasting absurd. Buy it for conversations you need to prove you handled well. Buy something else for campaigns.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology