Per-Message Texting Bills You in Credits, Not Messages

The unit on the invoice is not the message you wrote#

Per-message texting quotes are priced in credits. A buyer reads a credit as one text, sends one text, and gets billed for three or four.

The gap is not a trick. Carriers bill in segments, vendors resell segments as credits, and the conversion rate between a credit and a message you would actually send is set by your writing.

That conversion rate is the largest uncontrolled variable in any per-message quote, and it is the one number no pricing table shows.

• TextUs restructured its published pricing on 10 September 2026: one Pro tier at $299/mo including 5,000 messages and 5 phone numbers, plus Enterprise custom (textus.com/pricing, read 10 September 2026).
• Our 19 August 2026 snapshot of the same page showed Essential $99/mo and Pro $199/mo, so the published entry point moved from $99 to $299 in three weeks.
• Twilio publishes $0.0083 per outbound US SMS segment and $0.022 per MMS, plus per-segment carrier fees, and states that text messages are charged per segment (twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us, read 10 September 2026).

Where the definition of a credit is written down#

Vendors do define the unit. The definition sits in a pricing FAQ, below the plan cards, below the calculator, in the section a buyer reads last if at all.

TextUs writes it out plainly: carriers break texts into fixed-size segments, each segment uses one credit, a standard text of up to 160 characters is one segment.

The same FAQ adds the part that decides the bill. Longer messages, or messages with emojis or special characters, split across multiple segments and use multiple credits.

• TextUs states most messages use 1 credit but a longer one may use 3 to 4, and that MMS picture messages use 3 credits each (textus.com/pricing FAQ, read 10 September 2026).
• The plan card above that FAQ advertises 5,000 messages, not 5,000 credits, so the headline unit and the billed unit use different words on the same page.
• Carrier segment math is fixed and public: 160 GSM-7 characters in a single segment, 153 per segment once a message is concatenated, and 67 per segment once any character forces UCS-2.
• One emoji, one curly apostrophe pasted from a doc, or an accented name is enough to force UCS-2 on the whole message.

The copy that earns replies is the copy that costs most#

A B2B opener that gets answered is not 140 flat characters. It names the person, names a specific reason for the message, and reads like a human wrote it, which runs 250 to 350 characters.

At 153 characters per segment that is two or three credits before anything else. Add a single emoji and the whole message reprices at 67 characters per segment, so the same text becomes four or five.

Per-message billing therefore taxes the exact message that lifts reply rate, and rewards the clipped 140-character template that gets ignored.

• Worked example at the published TextUs rates: a 300-character opener with one emoji is 5 segments, which is 5 credits, or $0.10 at the $0.02 planned rate rather than the $0.02 a buyer assumed.
• Across 1,000 contacts and three touches that is 15,000 credits against a plan that includes 5,000, so the included volume covers roughly one touch of one campaign.
• Run your own numbers before signing anything: paste your three best-performing messages into our SMS segment calculator and read the segment count, not the character count.
• Blue Reacher bills a flat $249 per line per month, or $1,949 per line per year, with no per-message fees, so message length changes reply rate and never changes the invoice.

Two different prices for exactly the same message#

Overage is usually presented as one rate. On the restructured TextUs page it is two, and which one applies depends on whether you predicted the volume rather than on anything in the message.

Planned growth is published at $0.02 per message with published rates running to $1,500/mo. Occasional spikes past what you bought are billed at $0.05 per message.

The same text, sent to the same contact, on the same line, costs two and a half times more because a forecast was wrong. That is a forecasting penalty priced as a message rate.

• TextUs publishes $0.02 per message for planned volume and $0.05 per message for spikes past purchased volume (textus.com/pricing, read 10 September 2026).
• Outbound volume is spiky by design. A conference, a product launch, or a reactivation pass across a dormant list is exactly the month that lands in the higher band.
• What to verify before signing: whether your vendor has one overage rate or two, and what evidence counts as having planned the volume.

Prepaid balance, annual term, downgrade at renewal#

Credits are usually bought up front rather than metered monthly. TextUs states that you purchase a set volume of messages and draw down from that balance over the course of the agreement.

Three terms then compound. The agreement runs 12 months, month-to-month is not offered, and downgrades take effect at renewal rather than when you ask for them.

A team that overestimates volume in month one carries that estimate for a year. The mistake is not recoverable by sending less, because the balance was already purchased.

• TextUs publishes a 12-month minimum term, states it does not currently offer month-to-month plans, and applies downgrades at renewal (textus.com/pricing FAQ, read 10 September 2026).
• Upgrades are prorated immediately. The asymmetry is deliberate and it is disclosed, which is more than most of the category does.
• What to verify: whether unused credits expire at renewal, roll forward, or are refundable, and get the answer in the order form rather than from a rep on a call.

Capabilities priced outside the plan#

The plan price is a floor, not a total, because parts of the product a buyer assumes are included are sold as line items alongside the credits.

LoopMessage publishes the clearest version of this. Its pricing page prices the ability to start conversations with new contacts as an add-on rather than as a plan feature.

Read every add-on row as a question about your actual workflow. Outbound to people who have not written to you first is not an accessory, it is the entire job.

• LoopMessage prices Init conversations, described as the sender being able to initiate conversations with new contacts first, at +$30/mo (loopmessage.com/pricing, read 10 September 2026).
• The same page prices a phone number instead of an email address at +$15/mo, SMS and RCS fallback with call forwarding at +$15/mo, and WhatsApp at +$10/mo.
• TextUs priced additional phone numbers twice on one page when we first read it. Corrected 15 September 2026: the page now says $49/mo per extra number in all three places (textus.com/pricing, read 15 September 2026).
• What to verify: total the add-ons your team will switch on in week one, then compare that total against the plan price you were quoted.

What the carrier charges underneath all of this#

Credits are a resale of a wholesale unit that is published openly, so the markup is checkable rather than mysterious. Twilio lists its US rates on a public page.

Outbound SMS starts at $0.0083 per segment and MMS at $0.022 per message, with per-segment carrier fees added on top by destination carrier.

Knowing the wholesale number does not make a vendor rate unfair. It does tell you which parts of a quote are pass-through cost and which parts are packaging.

• Twilio's US carrier fees per outbound SMS segment, read 2 Oct 2026: AT&T $0.0035, T-Mobile $0.0045, Verizon $0.005, US Cellular $0.005. MMS adds $0.007 to $0.01 per message.
• A long code number is $1.15/mo at Twilio, against $49 per additional number in the packaged plans above.
• MMS is where repricing shows most clearly: one MMS is a single billed message at the wholesale rate, and three credits inside a credit plan.
• None of these carrier rates apply to iMessage, which does not ride carrier SMS routes and carries no A2P registration requirement.

Model the bill before you compare two quotes#

Comparing a $299 plan to a $249 line by their headline numbers compares two different units. One is a monthly floor plus a variable your copy controls, the other is the whole number.

Do the arithmetic once, on paper, with your own messages and your own contact count. It takes about fifteen minutes and it is the only version of the comparison that survives month three.

Then read the term sheet for the three things that are not on the pricing page at all: the credit definition, the overage bands, and when a downgrade takes effect.

• Count segments in your three best messages, multiply by contacts and touches, and price that against both the included volume and each overage band.
• Add every add-on your workflow requires, including the ability to message people who have not replied to you before.
• Ask what happens to unused credits, and whether the term can be exited before renewal, in writing.
• Blue Reacher's answer to all three is the same flat number: $249 per line per month or $1,949 per line per year, no per-message fees, lines paced at 50 opted-in and 30 cold new contacts a day, and no A2P registration required.

Frequently asked questions