Most articles about "SMS marketing" assume you run an online store and want to blast a discount code to ten thousand people. A consultant's need is the opposite. You text a small number of clients, and nearly every message is a conversation — confirming tomorrow's call, chasing a signature, answering a quick question. So the feature that decides the tool is two-way texting: clients reply, and you handle those replies in one tidy inbox. After that comes plain ease of use and a price that makes sense when you only send a few messages a week. We reweighted the rubric around exactly that and ranked the six. A quick definition as we go: a "credit" is one text of up to 160 characters; longer texts are split into segments, each costing a credit.
We scored the same five criteria as our main SMS ranking, then reweighted them for a consultant. The deciding criterion is two-way conversational texting — a real shared inbox for replies — weighted at 30%, because your texts are conversations, not blasts. We weighted ease of setup and use heavily, valued low-volume pricing because you send little, kept compliance and deliverability solid, and treated deep ecommerce automation as near-irrelevant. See the full rubric →
Two-way conversational texting30%
Ease of setup & use25%
Value at low volume20%
Compliance & deliverability15%
Calendar / CRM integrations10%
01
RANK
★ Editor’s Choice
SimpleTexting
Best for client conversations
The right default for almost every consultant. SimpleTexting's shared inbox makes texting a client feel exactly like the Messages app on your phone — you see the thread, you reply, done — which is precisely the experience a relationship-led practice needs. It is genuinely easy to learn, handles the 10DLC registration for you, and offers scheduling and simple automations like an appointment reminder without burying you in features. Entry pricing is fair at $39 a month for 500 credits, with a 15% nonprofit discount if you qualify. For conversational, client-by-client texting, nothing here is friendlier.
If you only text now and then, TextMagic is the most honest deal here because it is pay-as-you-go: no monthly plan, just buy credits and spend about $0.049 per US text. A consultant sending a few dozen messages a month might pay only a couple of dollars, where a plan-based tool would charge $39 regardless. It does two-way texting well and adds a dedicated number for $10 a month. The inbox is plainer and less polished than SimpleTexting's, which is the only reason it sits second.
Sakari is the pick for the consultant who runs everything through a CRM, because it plugs neatly into HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack and Intercom — meaning a text can fire automatically off a deal stage or a booking, and replies land where you already work. At $25 a month for a generous bundle and a free dedicated number, it is well priced too. It sits third only because for a consultant who just wants to text clients by hand, its integration-first approach is slightly more than needed; pair it with a CRM and it shines.
EZ Texting is straightforward and starts low at $25 a month, with friendly tools for sending the same message to a small group — handy if you run workshops or a small mailing list of clients alongside one-to-one texting. It does the job. It ranks below the leaders because its two-way inbox is less refined and a couple of costs creep in: a telecom fee folded into the base price, a per-extra-user charge, and credits that expire after twelve months. Fine for occasional group sends; not as clean for daily conversations.
Klaviyo is a superb platform — but it is built for ecommerce marketing, where SMS rides alongside email to recover abandoned carts and announce sales. If your consultancy also sells products or courses online and you already use Klaviyo for email, adding SMS is sensible. As a standalone way to text a handful of clients, it is the wrong shape: credit-based pricing aimed at high volume and an interface organised around campaigns, not conversations. Right tool, wrong job for most consultants.
Postscript is excellent at one specific thing: SMS marketing for Shopify stores. It is purpose-built around an online catalogue, abandoned carts and shopper segments. For a consultant with no store, almost none of that applies, and you would be bending a retail tool to do simple client texting it was never designed for. We include it for completeness and to be clear: unless you run a Shopify shop, this is not your tool. Start at the top of the list instead.
What is two-way texting, and why does it matter for a consultant?+
Two-way texting means clients can reply to your message and you see and answer their replies in a shared inbox, like a normal text conversation — rather than blasting a one-way announcement. For a consultant, almost every text is a conversation: confirming a call, nudging a late deliverable, answering a quick question. That is why we weighted the two-way inbox highest, and why SimpleTexting wins it.
What does 10DLC mean and do I have to deal with it?+
10DLC stands for 10-Digit Long Code — it is the registration US carriers require before a business can text from a normal local number. Yes, you have to register, but every tool here walks you through it, usually a one-time form and a small fee. Skipping it gets your messages blocked, so do it on day one. SimpleTexting and Sakari make the process especially painless.
I only send a few texts a month. What is the cheapest option?+
TextMagic, because it is pay-as-you-go — you buy a small bundle of credits and spend roughly $0.049 per US text, with no monthly plan to commit to. For a consultant sending a handful of messages a week, that can cost a few dollars a month versus a $39 plan elsewhere. The trade-off is a plainer inbox than SimpleTexting's.
What is the common mistake consultants make choosing one of these?+
Buying an ecommerce SMS marketing platform — Klaviyo SMS, Postscript, Attentive — when you do not run an online store. Those tools are built to send mass promotional blasts tied to a shopping cart, and you pay for machinery you will never use. As a consultant you want conversational texting with clients, so start with a tool built for that, such as SimpleTexting.