Attentive Alternatives

Klaviyo is the name that comes back most often when a brand leaves Attentive, and four of the comparison guides we read put it in a heading. The reason is simple: most Attentive customers already run their email in Klaviyo, so moving SMS there removes a second contract, a second subscriber list and a second attribution report. The free plan covers 250 active profiles, 500 emails a month and $5 of mobile messages. The Email plan starts at $20 a month for 500 active profiles and 5,000 emails, and the Marketing plan at $25, with a first month at $1 on the current offer for up to 5,000 active profiles.

SMS and MMS are an add-on on the Email and Marketing plans, priced by the mobile messages you buy, and set by quote on Custom. That keeps the entry price low, but it means you budget two lines: the email tier, which grows with active profiles, and the message spend, which grows with sends. The upside of sharing one profile is real. A flow can branch on an email click and send a text an hour later, and suppression works across both channels. Brands that compare Klaviyo with Attentive usually lose a few SMS-specific extras and gain a single place to build segments. Our guide to switching away from Klaviyo shows the other side, if your list is large enough for the profile tiers to sting.

Postscript is the closest match to Attentive for a Shopify store, and three guides we read rank it near the top. Like Attentive, it is SMS first: keywords, pop-ups, two-way conversations, flows on Shopify events and revenue attribution. Unlike Attentive, every rate sits on its pricing page. Starter costs $0 a month with a $49 monthly minimum spend and $0.009 per SMS. Growth costs $100 a month with $0.008 per SMS, and Professional $500 a month with $0.007 per SMS. US carrier fees come on top: $0.00435 per SMS and $0.00832 per MMS on average. The free trial gives a credit of $100 to use in the first 30 days.

Do the math before you pick a tier. The per-message gap between Starter and Growth is a tenth of a cent, so the $100 Growth fee only pays for itself in rates at about 100,000 SMS a month; below that, you move up for the features, like live chat and email support, not for the price. Ten thousand SMS on Starter come to about $133.50 a month with carrier fees. MMS is where bills jump: $0.045 per MMS on Starter, five times the SMS rate. Setup runs through the Shopify app, and the help center routes headless stores through that app too, so non-Shopify brands should look at SlickText or Klaviyo instead. Postscript has added RCS and email to its channels, with RCS as an option on Professional.

Omnisend is the budget answer to Attentive, and it is in two of the guides we read. It sells email, SMS and web push from one dashboard, with ecommerce flows ready to switch on. The free plan sends 500 emails a month. Standard sends 6,000 emails a month for the first contact tier, or 12 times your list size. Pro sends unlimited emails, with a fair use limit at 60 times your list, and adds SMS at volume rates from $0.007 per message, the rate for high-volume US sends. Support runs 24/7 on every plan, the free one included.

Here is the catch in small type: SMS and MMS sit on the Pro plan. A store that signs up for Standard to save money gets no texting at all. The second catch is the discount. The headline prices, $11.20 for Standard and $41.30 for Pro, are what you pay when you pay 3 months upfront at 30% off; the same toggle shows $48 and $177 for those three months without the discount, so $16 and $59 a month for 500 contacts on Standard and 2,500 on Pro, and after 3 months you are billed monthly. Brands spending $400 a month or more get a dedicated account expert with migration help. Our Omnisend alternatives page covers where it falls short as you grow.

SlickText is the SMS-only pick for brands that want Attentive's focus without its contract, and three guides we read rank it. Every tool comes on every plan; you only choose how many credits a month you need. The grid starts at $29 a month for 500 credits and climbs through $49 for 1,000, $129 for 3,500 and $319 for 10,000, up to $939 for 50,000. Paying yearly gives 2 months free: the 500-credit tier becomes $290 a year, $24.17 a month, and the credits land as a yearly pool of 6,000 that you can spend in any month.

Two details are worth knowing. Unused credits roll over for one term after your billing date, so a slow month is not wasted. And service grows with the plan: plans from $129 include a 1-on-1 onboarding session, and from $579 a month you get a dedicated customer success manager. RCS, the richer message format that Attentive pushes, costs extra here: a $500 one-time setup fee plus $200 a year in maintenance. SlickText is not an ecommerce suite, so you will not find Shopify-native cart flows as deep as Postscript's or email in the same tool. For a store that sends texts on promotions and keywords, that is often enough. See how it stacks up in our business SMS for ecommerce ranking.

Emotive sits between software and service, and three guides we read rank it. Its pitch is conversational SMS run with help from its own team, which suits a brand that leaves Attentive because nobody internally has time to write texts. Unlike Attentive, it lists its plans. Starter costs $100 a month plus $0.015 per SMS and $0.025 per MMS, on a monthly contract with no minimum spend. Pro costs $200 a month plus $0.01 per SMS, with a $200 minimum spend. Advanced costs $300 a month plus $0.008 per SMS, with a $400 minimum spend.

The rates fall fast as you move up, so do the math on your volume. At 20,000 SMS a month, Starter costs $100 plus $300 in messages, $400 in total; Pro costs $200 plus $200, also $400; above that volume Pro wins. Read the guarantee before you count on it: it needs qualification, and the site must receive at least 10,000 monthly unique visits. Ask in the demo how many hours of team time your plan includes. If you would rather keep control and only want software, Postscript or SlickText will cost less for the same sends.

SimpleTexting is the easy option, and two guides we read list it. It is a texting app first: campaigns, keywords, two-way inbox and a mobile app, with little to configure. The estimated monthly cost is $39.00 for 500 credits, which breaks down into $29 for the credits and $10 for the local number, plus a $4 one-time carrier registration. Yearly billing saves 20%: $398.40 a year, or $33.20 a month, with the 6,000 credits arriving as a yearly pool. Extra credits cost 5.5 cents each at that tier, extra teammates $20 a month per user and extra numbers $10 a month.

The model is easy to read, but the credit is the unit to watch. Carriers also charge their own fees, about $0.0025 per message on average. An MMS uses 3 credits, so an image campaign drains a 500-credit plan three times faster, as our SimpleTexting review details. It suits a gym, a clinic or a local shop far better than a Shopify brand chasing abandoned carts, since you will not get order-based flows or revenue attribution. Every tier is in our SimpleTexting pricing breakdown, and our SimpleTexting alternatives page covers the next step up.