Finding the Best Mass Texting Service For Your Ministry
Finding The Best Mass Texting Service For Your Ministry.
We’ve sorted through the billions of mass texting services (see the complete list at the bottom) out there and chose the two most stable and solid web-based options for your ministry: Signal and Tatango.
How Signal And Tatango Are Different.
Signal |
Tatango |
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If you want the simplest solution, you’re primarily going to be sending from a smartphone, and you don’t mind paying, go with Tatango.
If you don’t mind a little simple smartphone trickery, you don’t want to pay anything, and you want something easy to use, go with Signal.
How-to guides for both are next.
Note: There’s a service called GroupMe that’s free, easier to use than both of these, and has apps for every platform imaginable. But, it’s not a broadcast service–it’s more of a chat service. Every person on the list can send a text to everyone else. So you might want to consider using GroupMe in smaller, trusted contexts, similarly to how you might have used a listserv in the past.
Here’s a list of the mass texting services we checked out for this post:
Texting services:
11 Comments
Greg Hsu
Just checked out the Signal website and are you sure it’s FREE for the first 500 subscribers? I’m seeing that 0-1000 subscribers is $30 per month…
http://www.signalhq.com/plans-and-pricing/
Just wanted to raise that to verify your post’s accuracy or clarify how you can get it free. Love the blog and content you folks write!
Matt Stauffer
Hey Greg, great question! There will be more details available tomorrow, but here’s an image showing you how sneakily they hid the free plan on their pricing plan:
http://cl.ly/3O2m1W0O3E0q2V3K2D1N
Thanks for the kind words!
Jeff Judge
Hey Matt,
We weren’t being sneaky, we just prefer people pay us money because we have a business to run (which means people and bills to pay). Feel free to sign up for the free plan – that’s why it’s there.
Thanks,
Jeff
Matt Stauffer
Hey Jeff,
No worries. I run a service with a similar pricing plan. “sneaky” is definitely tongue in cheek–and don’t worry, most Staffhacker readers know my sense of humor enough to not take it as anything else. Either way, though, thanks for your clarification!
brad
how does Signal stop you from using a smartphone? Do they just not have an app? Or do they actively block mobile browsers? Can user agent spoofing bypass it?
Matt Stauffer
Hey Brad,
Brian took a look at it, and it looks like they just chose not to put a login link from the home page. But if you directly visit the app.signalhq.com domain from your smartphone, you should be able to get in fine. Thanks for your vigilance–post updated!
Jeff Judge
I just wanted to say thank you for including us in your review, we really appreciate it! As a heads up, we’ll be releasing a mobile optimized version of the product soon. We also support sending a message via text message directly…I’ll put a video together and post it when ready.
Jeff Judge
Hey guys,
I just wanted to make sure for anyone reading this thread that our product is optimized for smartphones, thus you can easily login, create and send text messages via your phone.
Thanks,
Jeff
Brandon Robison
Tatango must have gotten rid of some plans because now their lowest plan is $499 a month! Even talked to someone their and confirm that I wasn’t missing something… Sad
Brian Sun
Hey Brandon, I wrote this post in February 2012 and Tatango has changed their service since then. Sorry for the confusion! I’d recommend checking out some of the other services I linked to. Hope that helps!
Ben Brady
Hello all, I came across this thread while browsing, and wanted to put my service out there for you all to consider. I have a mobile website/mareting and communcation package deal that I sell, but I can also do texting/social media platform by itself, and it is based on number of subscribers, as follows:
0-200 $40/mo.
201-400 $80/mo.
401-800 $120/mo.
801-1200 $160/mo.
1201-1600 $200/mo.
1601-2000 $240/mo.
Now this is for texting platform by itself, if purchased with the mobile website ( with app-like functionality) I have lower prices.
These prices are based on # of subscriber only! meaning, If you have 1500, and you text them 10 times a month, thats over 10,000 messages and the price stays 200.
Thanks
Ben