Textmagic

1. 1

   You create an account and get a free test balance to send trial messages before committing money. There is no subscription to cancel and no card required to look around.

2. 2

   You choose how messages leave the building. The default is Textmagic's own routes at roughly $0.049 per US SMS. The alternative is connecting an existing Twilio, Vonage, Sinch, or Bandwidth account, in which case Textmagic charges $0.01 per message and the carrier bills you separately at wholesale rates.

3. 3

   For two-way conversations you rent a dedicated virtual number at $10 a month, local or toll-free, with the first month free. In the US you also register a 10DLC campaign at $10 a month, again with a first month free, and Textmagic handles submission to The Campaign Registry. An alphanumeric sender ID is available for $10 a month in countries that permit it, which is most of Europe and not the United States.

4. 4

   You import contacts, build lists, and set up custom fields. Campaigns send with mail-merge personalization so a bulk send carries individual names, appointment times, or reference numbers. The flow builder sequences drip campaigns across SMS and email.

5. 5

   Inbound messages land in a shared inbox that also carries live chat and social channels, with no per-seat charge for the team working it. Sub-accounts let a multi-location or agency operation distribute credit and separate access. The API and email-to-SMS bridge handle system-generated alerts from software that cannot integrate any other way.

Prepaid pay-as-you-go credit with no monthly subscription and no per-seat charge. Credit is spent across SMS, MMS, and email. Numbers, sender IDs, and 10DLC registration carry small monthly fees.

Value assessment: Textmagic's value depends almost entirely on which of two products you buy. On its own routes at $0.049 per US SMS it is the most expensive per-message option in this comparison set, and a business sending 20,000 texts a month would pay close to $1,000 where Postscript on Growth would charge around $360. That path only makes sense at low or irregular volume, where the absence of a subscription and the permanence of credit outweigh the unit cost. On the bring-your-own-carrier path at $0.01 per message plus wholesale Twilio rates, the same 20,000 messages cost roughly $200 plus carrier fees, and Textmagic becomes one of the cheapest ways to run a real texting operation. Add unlimited seats and $10 numbers and the total cost of ownership for a small team is genuinely low. The honest summary is that Textmagic is poor value as a retail SMS reseller and very good value as software you point at your own carrier account.

Setup time

Account creation and first test message take minutes. Live sending is gated by number provisioning and, in the US, by A2P 10DLC brand and campaign approval, which typically runs one to four weeks. Bringing your own carrier adds an afternoon of credential setup and saves you most of the per-message cost thereafter.

Learning curve

Low. The 2023 platform rebuild produced a clean interface and the concepts are conventional: lists, campaigns, templates, inbox. The flow builder takes an hour to understand. The genuine learning is commercial rather than technical, specifically working out whether the standard rate or the bring-your-own-carrier path is right for your volume.

Onboarding

Entirely self-serve. A free test balance lets you send real messages before spending money, and there is no sales conversation, no contract, and no minimum commitment at any point.

Migration notes

Contacts import by CSV and export the same way, and the API makes bulk movement in either direction practical. Bring the consent record with the numbers rather than just the numbers. Because there is no subscription, there is no lock-in to unwind if you leave, and unspent credit is the only thing you have at risk. Porting a number in is possible but slower than simply renting a new $10 virtual number, which is what most accounts do.

Platforms

Web applicationiOS and Android appsEmail-to-SMS gatewaySMS gateway APIWorldwide SMS delivery with per-country rates

API

Documented SMS gateway REST API for sending, contact management, and inbound handling, plus email-to-SMS for systems that cannot call an API. Connects to Twilio, Vonage, Sinch, and Bandwidth as sending carriers at about $0.01 per message.

Compliance

A2P 10DLC campaign registration submitted on your behalfAutomatic STOP and opt-out suppressionGDPR obligations as a UK and EU established companyToll-free and local number provisioning

Data residency

UK and EU based operations, with the company headquartered in Romford, Essex and engineering presence in Estonia. Specific hosting regions are not published per customer.

SSO

Not published as a standard self-serve feature.

Security notes

Reports an average delivery rate of 98.4 percent across more than 200 million messages a year. Sub-accounts provide credit and access separation for multi-entity use. The bring-your-own-carrier option means sensitive traffic can route through infrastructure you control and audit directly.

Channels

Live chatEmail supportPhone supportHelp center

Documentation

Help center and API documentation covering setup, campaigns, automation, numbers, carrier connection, and the gateway API, with country-by-country rate tables published openly.

Community

No large formal user forum. The company reports a Net Promoter Score above 60 across roughly 25,000 active paying business users.

Founded

2001

Headquarters

Romford, Essex, United Kingdom, with engineering presence in Tallinn, Estonia

Ownership

Privately held and management-owned following a 2013 management buyout led by Priit Vaikmaa

Founders

Dan Houghton, Susan Jennifer Houghton, Mike Houghton

Employees

Roughly 36 to 50 across three continents (2026 estimates vary by source)

Funding

No meaningful venture funding. The business has been self-sustaining since 2001 and changed hands through a management buyout in 2013 rather than through investor rounds.

Textmagic is two products wearing one name, and which one you buy determines whether it is a good decision. As a retail SMS reseller at $0.049 a message it is the most expensive option here and hard to defend at any real volume. As a software layer over your own Twilio or Vonage account at $0.01 a message, with unlimited seats, $10 numbers, credit that never expires, and no subscription at all, it is one of the cheapest ways to run a competent business texting operation. Add a genuinely useful multichannel inbox and twenty-five years of uninterrupted operation under management ownership, and the vendor risk is lower than anything else in this category. The gaps are real: no ecommerce data, no CRM object sync, no dialer, and compliance handled rather than productized. Buy it if your sending is irregular, your team is larger than your seat budget, or you already own a carrier account. Skip it if you run a store, run a sales floor, or want a vendor to own your TCPA posture for you.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.