Text message marketing offers a unique and successful way to generate returning clientele and new customers. This review of textingly will cover some of their features and price points as well as ease of use and support.
Founded in 2010 by David Dundas, textingly or texting.ly, launched to assist business owners in communicating with their customers via SMS messaging. Textingly is a web-based software provider that has offices located “in the heart of” New York City and recently left beta (April 2011), adding several new features.
On the home page of textingly, there is a very well put together video showing how text message marketing works. After watching the video, there was no clear direction on the site. Crucial information, including buying information has been left off the site. The few pages on the site are bare and lack links and other navigational abilities to make visiting the site easy. Outside of pricing information or sign up, information was hard to get to and included visiting multiple pages to extract sought after facts.
Features for textingly are like most other information on the site, not easily found. A few features that are found include:
- Scheduling messages for future dates
- Add names to contacts
The pricing is a gem of textingly, offering plans that start at $15 for 400 messages and go up to $150 for as many as 5500 messages per month. Some of the plans offered are:
- Starter
o 400 messages a month
o $15 a month
- Standard
o 1600 messages a month
o $50 a month
- Pro
o 5500 messages a month
o $150 a month
Unfortunately, this is the extent of the information there is available about the pricing. Keywords and additional messages are not even mentioned let alone priced.
Given the lack of direction and information available from the textingly website, support is going to be a big part of this service. Again, searching through the site revealed a support email address through a contact link and on the pricing page there is a toll free number. That search continued to find video tutorials in the most peculiar of places. These videos are not comparable to the quality of video on the home page and only set to confuse more with lingo that does not fit the industry norm and an assumption of user familiarity.
In summary, textingly offers a service that bares an expense far below the industry averages and close to the most affordable that can be found. These low prices appear to be a “you get what you pay for” cost as the website and platform are navigational headaches with little to no direction. Support is available by email and there is a phone number available on the pricing page. These support features would need to be manned all day everyday just to disclose how this service works and the challenges that will most certainly arise. Sign up is free and access to the operational panel is made immediately available so make sure to do some significant testing and examination prior to purchase.