smskick vs EZ Texting: What You Pay When You Are Not Sending
EZ Texting is one of the better-known SMS marketing platforms and it does the job well. Its plans start at $25/month on the Launch tier, plus a $5 telecom fee, for 500 credits a month. smskick has no plans at all - you buy credits and use them whenever. That single difference drives most of what follows, so the honest question is not which product is better but which billing model matches how often you actually send.
EZ Texting's Launch plan is $25/month plus a $5 telecom fee for 500 credits, with overage at $0.04; higher tiers drop the overage to $0.03 and waive the telecom fee, and additional team seats are $10/month each. A2P carrier registration is included. smskick charges nothing monthly: credits are $0.060 down to $0.035 depending on pack size, they do not expire, seats are unlimited and registration is handled for you. EZ Texting has the broader feature set - MMS, a deeper marketing toolkit, and tiers that scale to enterprise volume. smskick is the better fit when your sending is uneven or occasional, and when you want the consent behind each list recorded rather than assumed.
| smskick | EZ Texting | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | smskick is pay-as-you-go credits with no subscription: 1 credit = 1 SMS segment, from $0.060 on the 250-credit Trial pack down to $0.035 on the 20,000-credit Scale pack. No monthly minimum, no per-seat charge, and credits do not expire while your account is open. | Tiered subscription: Launch at $25/month plus a $5 telecom fee for 500 credits, Boost at $75 and Scale at $125 with the fee waived and better overage rates. Enterprise runs $3,000/month for 200,000 credits. |
| Cost per message in practice | $0.035-$0.060 depending on pack size, and nothing at all in a month you do not send. | Launch works out around $0.06 per credit if you use the full allowance, with overage at $0.04. Higher tiers improve it substantially - Enterprise reaches $0.01 - but require the monthly commitment. |
| Team seats | Unlimited, no charge. | One user included; additional seats are $10/month each. |
| Carrier registration | We file the verification for your business as part of onboarding. | A2P carrier registration is included in the plan, with local numbers typically ready within a business day. This is genuinely well handled. |
| Consent and opt-out | Every list you upload requires you to confirm, for that list specifically, that the people on it opted in - and smskick records who confirmed it, when, and the exact wording they agreed to. STOP and its plainer cousins ("please stop", "unsubscribe me") are detected automatically and suppressed permanently for your account. Campaign sends are held outside 8am-9pm in the recipient's local time, inferred from their area code. | Standard opt-out handling and compliance guidance. As with most platforms, collecting and evidencing consent is your responsibility under the terms rather than something the product records for you. |
| Feature breadth | Focused: contacts with custom fields, templates, campaigns, scheduling, delivery tracking, analytics, REST API. smskick sends SMS to US numbers. No MMS, no international, no voice or WhatsApp. It is built for a business texting its own customer list, not for high-volume blasting or global multi-channel messaging. | Broader: MMS at 3 credits, unlimited contact uploads, a fuller marketing toolkit, and tiers that scale to very large volume. |
| Who it suits | Uneven or seasonal senders, and anyone who wants a per-list consent record they can produce on request. | Steady monthly senders who will use the allowance, teams wanting MMS, and organisations large enough for the Scale or Enterprise tiers to pay off. |
Where smskick wins
smskick wins when your sending is lumpy. A subscription is a bet that next month looks like this month, and for a business that texts around a seasonal promotion, a launch or an occasional announcement, that bet loses quietly every quiet month. smskick charges nothing when you are not sending, credits keep until you use them, and there is no per-seat fee to add a colleague. It also records the consent behind each import - who attested, when, and the exact wording - which is the difference between having a policy and having an answer.
Where EZ Texting wins
EZ Texting wins on breadth and on scale economics. MMS, a deeper marketing toolkit and included A2P registration are all real, and the tier structure rewards volume in a way pay-as-you-go cannot: at Enterprise the effective rate is around $0.01 per credit, well below anything smskick offers. If you send steadily every month, need picture messaging, or are large enough for the upper tiers, EZ Texting is the stronger choice.
FAQ
Is smskick cheaper than EZ Texting?
For occasional senders, clearly - there is no monthly fee, so a quiet quarter costs nothing. For steady senders it narrows, and at EZ Texting's higher tiers it reverses: their Enterprise overage of around $0.01 is well under smskick's $0.035 floor. Work out how many messages you actually send in a year before deciding.
Does smskick charge for extra users?
No. Seats are unlimited and free.
Does smskick support MMS?
No - SMS to US numbers only. If picture messaging matters, EZ Texting is the better fit.
Can I move my contacts over?
Yes. Export a CSV from EZ Texting and upload it; smskick maps columns by header and turns custom fields into {{merge_tags}}. If your file has opt-in source or date columns, those are read and stored against each contact.
Try smskick free
No registration. Pay only for what you send.
No plan to pick and nothing to cancel - buy a pack, send a campaign, see how it lands.