Your receptionist answers the phone.
This is how it answers the texts.
$50 a month on Growth or Scale. 2,000 texts a month in and out, the carrier registration filed for you, and a business number that finally replies with something other than “please call us”.
Right now your number can receive a text. That is all it can do.
Somebody texts you a photo of a leaking valve at nine at night. Our system sends back one message telling them to call instead. That is the honest limit of a line no carrier has cleared for texting, and we would rather send that than pretend.
Meanwhile the texting your business really does gets typed by you. The confirmation for Tuesday. The ask for a photo of the panel before you drive out. The deposit link. The nudge on the quote you sent Thursday and heard nothing about. All of it from your own thumbs, from the truck, after the calls are done.
The ones you get round to work fine. It is the ones you never get round to that cost you. The confirmation nobody sent on Tuesday is the empty slot on Wednesday.
What goes out, and who gets it
This is the whole register, not a sample of it. It is the same list we file with the carriers, so there is nothing your number can send that is missing from this page.
To your customers
The messages your business already sends by hand.
- Appointment confirmations
- Secure links to send photos or documents before you drive out
- A link to one of your forms
- A link to the quote you sent, and one reminder 72 hours later
- Deposit payment links, on your own payment page
- Who is coming and when they are on their way
To your on-call staff
The after-hours side, when Emergency Dispatch is on.
- Job alerts to the people on your list
- Who claimed it, and who was too late
- What is still open, when somebody asks
- How to join the on-call list, and the receipt when they do
To you
Only to a handset that texted ALERTS in first.
- A warning as your minutes approach the allowance
- A once-a-day list of replies waiting for your approval
- Your own test message, so you can read what a caller reads
Always, and not optional
The compliance replies every US carrier requires.
- STOP, and the one confirmation CTIA still permits after it
- HELP, answered even after somebody has stopped
- The receipt when somebody texts YES or START
An assistant on the thread, in two sentences
When somebody texts your number, they get a real answer, written from your business’s own facts and signed with your business’s name. Short, because a text should be.
It is deliberately unarmed. It holds no calendar, no price list and no booking tool, and it is not permitted to act as though it does. It will not tell somebody a time is free, will not put a number on a job, and will not say an appointment is booked. When it does not know, it says it does not know and the thread comes to you.
That is a smaller promise than the one your phone agent makes. It is the promise we can keep in a channel with no tone of voice and no chance to correct itself.
It will never say
- “Thursday at 2 is free.”
- “That will be about $400.”
- “You are booked in.”
- “Someone will be there by noon.”
Those four are prohibitions in the assistant’s own instructions, not habits we hope it keeps. Booking and pricing stay on the call, where it has the tools to be right.
Texting on a business number is not a setting
Every US carrier requires the business behind a number to be registered, and the campaign it texts under to be declared. An unregistered number does not fail loudly. It gets filtered, and the messages simply stop arriving.
We file it. Your legal name, your address, your EIN and the exact list of message types above, assembled from what your account already holds and submitted on your behalf. You review it and authorize it once; you do not fill in a carrier form.
The honest part: it does not switch on the day you buy it.
Carriers take their own time to clear a registration and we do not control it. We file the day you add Business Texting, nothing sends until it clears, and we tell you the day it does.
$50 a month, on top of your plan
Growth · $199/mo
2,000
texts a month, sent and received
The pool Business Texting carries.
$199 + $50 = $249 a month in total.
Scale · $349/mo
4,000
texts a month, sent and received
The same pool, plus the 2,000 Scale adds.
$349 + $50 = $399 a month in total.
- Sent and received both draw from the pool, because the carrier bills us for both.
- Past the allowance, texting meters at $0.025 a segment. That meter is off until you switch it on.
- Not available on Essential. That plan has no outbound texting lane for this to switch on.
- One invoice. It rides your existing billing date, prorated for the days left in the month, and it comes off the same way.
Questions owners ask first
Can I text people who have not contacted me first?
No. Every lane here either answers a message somebody sent you, or follows a call where the caller gave permission to be texted. There is no bulk send, no list upload and no marketing blast, and the product will not grow one.
What happens when I run out of texts?
Nothing, unless you asked for something to happen. Past the allowance, texting meters at $0.025 a segment, and that meter is off until you switch it on. Leave it off and sending pauses for the rest of the month instead of billing you.
Can I add it on Essential?
No, and it is not a packaging decision. Essential has no outbound texting lane at all, so there is nothing on that plan for this to switch on. Growth is the first plan that can hold up its half of a text conversation.
What can the texting assistant not do?
Book, quote or promise. It holds no calendar, no price list and no booking tool, and it is instructed never to say a time is free, never to state a price, and never to call an appointment confirmed. When it does not know, it says so.
How long does the carrier registration take?
Carriers set that pace, not us. We file the brand and the campaign the day you add Business Texting and we tell you the day it clears. Until it clears, nothing sends.
Do received texts count against the allowance?
Yes. The pool covers both directions because the carrier bills us for both, and a two-way conversation has an inbound half for every reply.
Next Tuesday the confirmations go out without you
Somebody texts the number at nine at night and gets an answer instead of a brush-off. The photo of the panel is on the job before you drive to it. The quote you sent Thursday gets its one nudge on Sunday, and you did not have to remember it.
It comes off your bill the month you decide it is not earning its keep. No notice period, and the unused part of the month comes back as credit.