The 6 best Attentive alternatives for 2024 (free and paid)
By: Bernard Meyer — May 31, 2023
Reading Time: 9minutes
Most marketers who need bulk SMS services tend to think that Attentive is the best SMS marketing tool to interact with their mobile-first audience.
It’s a robust SMS platform offering valuable customer data. However, it’s a complicated do-it-yourself service model that comes with a steep learning curve for you and your team.
Attentive also doesn’t offer international coverage and only helps marketers reach users based in the US and Canada.
These are two reasons that marketers look for alternatives to Attentive. In this post, we have compiled a list of the best Attentive alternatives for your campaigns.
Drive sales on autopilot with pre-built automation workflows on Omnisend
Attentive is a leading SMS platform that empowers brands to engage their audience through conversational mobile messaging.
Leveraging available first-party data, Attentive helps marketers understand their audience and deliver targeted messaging to motivate them to take action.
The tool also integrates with other marketing apps to help you design profit-making SMS campaigns with confidence.
Pros
Provides learning opportunities to help marketers learn how to gain the most from the platform
Advanced list building capabilities
Integrates with other apps to improve your SMS advertising campaigns
Dedicated account manager
Collects valuable first-party data to help marketers understand their audience better
Cons
While the platform is feature-rich, it’s still missing important features
Doesn’t provide international coverage beyond US and Canada
Setting up campaigns as a newbie is difficult
Negative ROI for marketers
Poor client relationship management
Learn key stats and tips
SMS is easier to use and more cost-effective than ever. Discover the real impact behind SMS marketing and why you should incorporate this valuable channel.
Landline texting, shortcodes, web forms, SMS keywords
Textedly
Bulk texting
Yes
From $24/mo
QR codes, keyword customization
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Top on our list of the best Attentive alternatives is Omnisend. This tool empowers marketers to run promotional SMS campaigns with ease thanks to its pre-built automation workflows.
The tool is a big hit with ecommerce marketers who adore it for its vast automation library that helps them create automated messages for almost all situations such as abandoned carts, anniversaries, and order confirmation.
Trusted by over 100,000 brands and with a Shopify rating of 4.8/5, it’s easy to see why Omnisend is among the top Attentive alternatives.
Setting up Omnisend is easy and within minutes you will have created and delivered SMS messages to your mobile audience.
And unlike Attentive, which lacks international coverage, Omnisend supports all countries for SMS marketing to help you connect effectively with your global audience.
But SMS is not the only channel that Omnisend supports. One of Omnisend’s strong points is that you can combine SMS, email, and push notifications for an optimal omnichannel marketing experience that drives sales.
Landing pages and signup forms to collect phone numbers
24/7 customer support
Omnisend and Attentive free plans comparison
Omnisend’s free plan is generous, allowing you to access all the features from its paid plan and send up to 60 SMS each month.
Many Attentive alternatives don’t even have a free plan and you will need to part with your hard-earned dollars to get a feel of the platforms.
But what makes the Omnisend free plan even better is the fact that it offers more than SMS functionalities. You also get 500 free emails a month, pre-built automation workflows, signup forms, unlimited segmentation, and 24/7 support.
And how does Omnisend compare to Attentive when it comes to their free plans? Well, Attentive doesn’t have one—you need to get a quote to discover how much you will pay to create SMS campaigns with the platform.
Let’s now go over Omnisend’s key features and compare the same with Attentive.
SMS campaigns – Omnisend allows you to create personalized SMS campaigns so you can engage your customers with highly-relevant text messages. It also combines SMS with emails and push notifications to increase the reach of your campaigns.
On the other hand, Attentive only offers SMS campaigns. This limits your campaign reach and could hamper your scaling efforts.
SMS automation – Omnisend offers automated SMS campaigns that are triggered by specific events and actions. These campaigns come with pre-built workflows to help you save time when creating your campaigns.
Attentive doesn’t offer pre-built workflows for its automated campaigns, making it difficult to build SMS campaigns.
SMS segmentation and targeting – Omnisend allows ecommerce marketers to segment customers based on their shopping behavior and transactional events and send them personalized messages.
Attentive uses first-party customer data to give marketers a comprehensive view of the customer data to power personalization.
Opt-in options – Omnisend and Attentive both offer opt-in SMS marketing to help you build a high-quality subscriber list. This ensures you only send promotional SMS to people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer
Personalization and dynamic content – Omnisend collects relevant personal data to help marketers build more intelligent customer journeys. This greatly enhances the customer experience and fosters a tight connection with customers.
Attentive doesn’t deliver dynamic content to SMS subscribers because of its rigid personalization capabilities.
Two-way text messaging – Omnisend supports two-way text messaging to help brands have back-and-forth conversations with their SMS subscribers.
Attentive also supports two-way text messaging to allow brands to speak with their customers and not at them.
This makes it easy for ecommerce marketers to build SMS campaigns and generate more sales through personalized messaging.
Attentive integrates with fewer ecommerce platforms, namely Shopify and BigCommerce. This makes Attentive unsuitable for marketers who use ecommerce platforms that are not supported by the tool.
When it comes to marketing channels, Omnisend has a plethora of integrations to improve your reach.
Notably, the tool combines SMS and email marketing to help you engage your customers wherever they are and give them an omnichannel marketing experience.
However, Attentive only delivers SMS campaigns and this could limit the reach and success of your marketing campaigns.
Paid plans comparison
Omnisend has 2 paid plans, Standard and Pro.
If you have up to 500 contacts, Standard starts at $16/mo and provides the following features for that price point:
Reach up to 500 contacts
Send up to 60 SMS per month
Deliver 6,000 emails per month
Unlimited web push
Pro starts from $59/mo and provides the following features for that price:
Reach up to 500 contacts
Send up to 3,933 SMSs per month
Deliver unlimited emails
Unlimited web push
If you have a larger audience, you would be able to reach more contacts and send more SMS and emails each month. As you can see, Omnisend has simple and transparent pricing. The cost of sending SMS with Omnisend is based on an SMS credits subscription system and you can use the credits to send both SMS and MMS.
There’s also a simple SMS calculator you can use to estimate your SMS sending costs.
Attentive is not transparent with their pricing and you will have to get a quote to know the cost of your SMS campaigns.
Estimate the sending cost and preview your SMS campaigns with our SMS length and pricing calculator
Omnisend’s award-winning customer support is one of the reasons many marketers choose it for their SMS campaigns. The company provides 24/7 customer support to users on all its plans.
Attentive also has a reliable customer support team to help users build their campaigns. They also have a help center with articles and guides to help users optimize their campaigns.
EZ Texting is another alternative to Attentive you can get to streamline your SMS campaigns. The tool is the most comprehensive SMS platform on this list, providing users with advanced SMS marketing tools such as polls, surveys, and contests.
This Attentive alternative is ideal for small businesses and multinational organizations, enabling them to engage their audience with captivating SMS campaigns to increase profits and grow their subscriber base.
Why is EZ Texting a better alternative?
Superior contact management and import
Text automation and drip campaigns
Text scheduling and recurring texts
Group texting
Link shortener and tracking
Free plans comparison
EZ Texting doesn’t have a free plan.
Features
Ready-made design templates
Two-way texting
SMS and MMS picture texts
SafeSTOP Opt-Out
Advanced analytics & reporting
Pricing comparison
Launch plan starts at $20/mo
Boost plan starts at $60/mo
Scale plan starts at $100/mo
Entreprise plan starts at $3,000/mo
Customer support
EZ Texting provides reliable customer support in all its plans. It gives clients on-time chat support from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm EST from Monday to Friday.
Twilio is one of the top Attentive alternatives for business SMS communication. It powers customer engagement by providing marketers with a powerful API to integrate different types of messaging into their applications.
Unlike other SMS marketing software that provide an all-in-one platform for your messaging needs, Twilio enables you to choose the channels you need and add others as your business grows.
This means you can start with SMS and scale up to MMS and WhatsApp messaging when ready.
Why is Twilio a better alternative?
Has a global reach, allowing you to send messages to 180+ countries
Message personalization
Advanced multimedia capabilities
Conversational chat
Features
Developer-friendly APIs
Modular platform
Automated responses
Two-way messaging
Message personalization
Pricing comparison
Twilio has a pay-as-you-go model where the SMS pricing is based on your destination and the message you are sending.
Customer support
Twilio gives personalized support whenever you need it. They also provide a dedicated technical manager to help you fix the problems that arise.
Heymarket is one of the top alternatives to Attentive if you’re looking for a tool that only supports SMS communication.
The tool’s standout feature is that it allows marketers to engage with subscribers through shared inboxes. It also shortens the agent response time by grouping customer queries and assigning them to an agent for immediate response.
Why is Heymarket a better alternative?
Allows marketers to set reminders so they can reply to customer queries on time
Supports personalization to help you send targeted messages
Has a wide variety of built-in integrations
AI-driven insights
Private comments for teams managing an SMS campaign
Free plans comparison
Heymarket doesn’t have a free plan, just like Attentive.
Features
Shared inbox
Lists and campaigns
Performance metrics
CSAT surveys
SMS automation
Pricing comparison
Standard plan starts at $19/mo
Plus plan starts at $39/mo
Pro plan starts at $59/mo
Enterprise plan – Custom pricing
Customer support
Heymarket provides priority support to members on the enterprise plan.
Are you looking for an Attentive alternative that supports 1-on-1 SMS communication? Then, SimpleTexting would be the ideal SMS marketing software for you.
The tool supports both SMS and MMS messaging to enable you to text in real-time with your customers. It will also save you time with its autoresponder features that let you send automated messages following specific user actions.
What makes this tool even better is the fact that you can plan and schedule your mass SMS even months in advance. This helps you execute your campaigns better as your SMS will always reach your audience on time. It also allows toll-free, landline, and shortcode texting.
Why is SimpleTexting a better alternative?
Provides multi-user access to make it easy for your team to manage your SMS campaigns
Collects relevant user data to help you personalize your messages
Has multiple integrations to enhance your marketing
Easy to use SMS API
Free plans comparison
SimpleTexting doesn’t have a free plan.
Features
Impressive list building capabilities
Two-way messaging
Mass texting
Custom fields
Pricing comparison
Premium plan starts at $29/mo
Customer support
SimpleTexting provides customer support on all days of the week, including weekends.
Last on our list of the best Attentive alternatives is Textedly which is perfect for bulk texting. With Textedly, you can send up to 100,000 messages to your audience.
Its robust list building tools make it easy to grow your subscriber list as well.
Why is Textedly a better alternative?
Makes it easy to schedule text messages
Unlimited contacts
Free incoming messages
Provides multi-user support to encourage team collaboration
Free plans comparison
Textedly has a 14-day free trial that allows you to send up to 50 SMS.
Features
Two-way text messaging
SMS surveys
Omnichannel inbox
Advanced reporting
Pricing comparison
Basic plan starts at $26/mo
Bronze plan starts at $38/mo
Plus plan starts at $69/mo
Customer support
Textedly provides live chat support on all its paid plans.
Wrap up
While Attentive is a decent tool for your SMS marketing campaigns, there are other Attentive alternatives with better features. For example, Omnisend combines SMS with email and push notifications to supercharge your marketing efforts.
When choosing your alternative to Attentive, carefully examine your needs to ensure you get a tool with all the features you need to run successful campaigns.
Ideally, you want to go for a tool that supports additional channels beyond SMS to give your customers a truly personalized omnichannel experience.
Drive sales on autopilot with advanced SMS marketing features
Bernard is the Sr. Director of Communications & Creative at Omnisend, with a passion for good research, helping ecommerce businesses with their marketing automation needs, and beating absolutely everyone in Mario Kart 64.
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