Starter
For your first email program.
$16USD / month
$192 billed yearly.
20,000 emails / month
Choose Starter- 5 brands · 3 seats
- 5 custom sending domains
- 500 email verifications/month
- $1.50 / 1,000 extra emails
Nitrosend is the best Twilio alternative for a team that runs its email from AI and wants texting in the same place once it arrives, with the top score of 76.5 out of 100 of the seven reviewed here. It scores 9 out of 10 on working from your AI assistant, the heaviest test, because its official MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex write email campaigns and flows from the chat. To send email from an AI assistant with Nitrosend, connect the MCP server at api.nitrosend.com/mcp with an OAuth sign-in: campaigns and flows stay drafts until they are approved, and a single receipt or other transactional email sends on the call. Twilio sells texting and email as two products on two bills. Nitrosend's texting is coming soon and is not open to customers today, so it replaces the email side now, with emails in your brand's colors, fonts and voice. Email costs $20 a month for 20,000 with unlimited contacts. Textmagic comes next at 53, then Telnyx at 50. If you need programmable voice, SIP trunking or carrier-level number management, no email platform does that, and Telnyx or Twilio itself is the answer.
The ranking
Rank 1Nitrosend
76.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Emails sent
- Free plan
- 5,000 emails, then 500 a month
- Entry plan
- $20 a month, 20,000 emails
- Works from your AI assistant9 out of 10Official MCP server writes and sends email campaigns, flows and single emails from the chat; campaigns and flows stay drafts until approved, and texting is coming soon (MCP registry).
- Emails in your brand, no designer9 out of 10Brand Kit scans the site for colors, fonts and voice, and applies them to every draft on every plan (docs).
- Price8.5 out of 10Unlimited contacts on every plan. $20 a month for 20,000 emails and $650 for a million emails on Scale including overage (pricing).
- Free plan7 out of 105,000 emails to start, then 500 a month, unlimited contacts. New accounts start at 100 recipients per rolling 24 hours (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan9 out of 10Receipts, resets and newsletters share one allowance and one API on every plan. Texting is coming soon and is not open to customers yet (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand6 out of 10A block builder exists for editing by hand, but it is plainer, because the agent is the main way in.
- Integrations, support and track record5 out of 10Shopify, Stripe, HubSpot, Attio and Mailchimp, five bring-your-own sending providers, a Node SDK, a CLI and signed webhooks for transactional email, but a young product from a small team (docs).
Nitrosend
Ask your agent for the next campaign
Connect Nitrosend to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex, point Brand Kit at your site, and describe the next email campaign or flow. Texting is coming soon. Contacts are unlimited on every plan.
Free: 5,000 emails to start, then 500 a month. No credit card.
Start free
Rank 2Textmagic
53 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Texts and emails sent
- Free plan
- None, a free trial
- Text rate
- $0.049 to the US
- Works from your AI assistant7 out of 10Official MCP connector for Claude and ChatGPT with OAuth. It sends and schedules texts to your lists and confirms each send first (Textmagic).
- Emails in your brand, no designer3 out of 10AI writing and email templates. Nothing reads your brand from your site (pricing).
- Price4 out of 10$0.003 an email by its own FAQ, so $60 for 20,000 and $3,000 for a million. Its calculator shows $0.001 (pricing).
- Free plan1 out of 10No free plan. A free trial with a small credit, plus 10,000 emails as a one-time welcome bonus (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan6 out of 10Texts, email campaigns and an SMS API for notifications from one account and one balance (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand7 out of 10A drag-and-drop email editor, AI templates, a text composer and an automation flow builder (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record7 out of 10Used by more than 20,000 companies, publicly listed, with a shared inbox and integrations (Textmagic).
Rank 3Telnyx
50 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Texts sent, per part
- Free plan
- None, a trial for AI products only
- Text rate
- $0.004 to the US
- Works from your AI assistant5 out of 10Official MCP server in its Node SDK that exposes the API. It sends messages one at a time, with no campaign to send (GitHub).
- Emails in your brand, no designer1 out of 10An API. Nothing writes the message or learns your brand (pricing).
- Price10 out of 10Its Email API, on beta rates, bills the whole month at one tier: $5.40 for 20,000 and $170 for a million, with no campaign or automation tools (pricing).
- Free plan1 out of 10No free plan. A trial credit covers its AI products, and texting needs a verified full account (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan6 out of 10Texts and a transactional email API on one account and one bill, both by API, with no campaign tools (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand1 out of 10No editor. Everything is built in your own code (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record7 out of 10Runs its own carrier network, founded in 2009, with free support and published per-carrier fees (pricing).
Rank 4Postscript
34.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Texts sent, plus a monthly fee
- Free plan
- None, a free trial
- Entry plan
- Starter, $49 monthly minimum
- Works from your AI assistant2 out of 10No official MCP server or assistant app. Only community-built MCP servers wrap its API (pricing).
- Emails in your brand, no designer3 out of 10Brand Center keeps AI messages in your voice, on the $699 a month AI plan. Nothing reads your brand from your site (pricing).
- Price2 out of 10Email is on a waitlist with no published price, so it is scored as a quote (pricing).
- Free plan1 out of 10No free plan. A free trial on each plan, then a $49 monthly minimum on Starter (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan3 out of 10Texts only for now. Campaigns and order texts run from one Shopify-connected account, and email is on a waitlist (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand7 out of 10A visual flow builder with templates for cart, browse, welcome and shipping texts, and sign-up popups (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record6 out of 10Built for Shopify stores since 2019, with live chat on Growth and API access from Professional (pricing).
Rank 5SimpleTexting
31 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Text credits
- Free plan
- None, a free trial
- Entry plan
- $29 a month, 500 credits, plus a number
- Works from your AI assistant2 out of 10No official MCP server or assistant app. Only a community-built MCP server wraps its API (pricing).
- Emails in your brand, no designer2 out of 10An AI Assist message generator writes texts. Nothing reads your brand from your site (pricing).
- Price0 out of 10Sells no email, so it cannot be priced on this test (pricing).
- Free plan1 out of 10No free plan. A free trial with no card, then a 30-day money-back guarantee (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan3 out of 10Texts only, no email. Campaigns, auto-replies and API sends run from one account (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand7 out of 10Campaigns, drip sequences, keywords, MMS and segments, with unlimited contacts on every plan (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record7 out of 10Running since 2010 and part of Sinch since 2021, with integrations and chat and phone support (pricing).
Rank 6SlickText
31 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Text credits
- Free plan
- None, a 14-day trial
- Entry plan
- $29 a month, 500 credits
- Works from your AI assistant2 out of 10No MCP server or assistant app, first-party or listed, but its v2 API creates and sends campaigns, so an agent can work it only through the raw API (API).
- Emails in your brand, no designer2 out of 10No brand learning from your site. You write the texts (SlickText).
- Price0 out of 10Sells no email, so it cannot be priced on this test (pricing).
- Free plan1 out of 10No free plan. A 14-day trial with no card (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan3 out of 10Texts only, no email. Campaigns, workflows and API sends run from one account (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand7 out of 10Campaigns, workflows, segments, popups, web forms and text-to-join keywords (SlickText).
- Integrations, support and track record7 out of 10Founded in 2011, rated 4.8 of 5 by 1,900+ reviewers on G2 by its own count, with US in-house support (SlickText).
Rank 7Plivo
25.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Texts sent, on the Enterprise plan
- Free plan
- $10 credit, not for texts
- Entry plan
- Enterprise from $1,000 a month
- Works from your AI assistant5 out of 10A first-party MCP server on Plivo's GitHub sends SMS one message at a time and runs locally. It was last updated in May 2025 and has no campaign to send (GitHub).
- Emails in your brand, no designer1 out of 10An API. Nothing writes the message or learns your brand (pricing).
- Price0 out of 10Sells no email, so it cannot be priced on this test (pricing).
- Free plan1 out of 10$10 in free credit on pay as you go, which does not cover texting. SMS is Enterprise only (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan3 out of 10Texts only, no email, through the API on the Enterprise plan (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand1 out of 10No editor. Everything is built in your own code (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record6 out of 10Coverage in 190+ countries on Enterprise, with short codes and custom sender IDs (pricing).
How they compare
How each one scores
Scores out of 10, September 26, 2026| What we compared | Nitrosend | Textmagic | Telnyx | Postscript | SimpleTexting | SlickText | Plivo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works from your AI assistant20 points | 9 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 |
| Emails in your brand, no designer10 points | 9 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 |
| Price20 points | 8.5 out of 10 | 4 out of 10 | 10 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 0 out of 10 | 0 out of 10 | 0 out of 10 |
| Free plan10 points | 7 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 |
| Receipts and newsletters on one plan10 points | 9 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 |
| Editor for building by hand15 points | 6 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 |
| Integrations, support and track record15 points | 5 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 |
| Total scoreout of 100 | 76.5 out of 100,1st | 53 out of 100,2nd | 50 out of 100,3rd | 34.5 out of 100,4th | 31 out of 100,tied 5th | 31 out of 100,tied 5th | 25.5 out of 100,7th |
Here are the seven yes-or-no questions teams usually ask before they move off Twilio. A tick means the service does it, as described on its own pages today. A dash means the answer is not a clean yes or no.
7 services, side by side
Checked September 26, 2026QuestionNitrosendTextmagicTelnyxPostscriptSimpleTextingSlickTextPlivo
NitrosendTextmagicTelnyxPostscriptSimpleTextingSlickTextPlivoSend a campaign from the chatCan an agent send a marketing campaign, email or text, without anyone opening the web app?Nitrosend: Yes.Textmagic: Yes.Telnyx: Not a yes or no.Postscript: No.SimpleTexting: No.SlickText: No.Plivo: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes, through the MCP server. Campaigns stay drafts until approved. |
| Textmagic | Yes. Yes, for texts, through its MCP connector, with each send confirmed. |
| Telnyx | Not a yes or no. Its MCP server sends messages through the API. There is no campaign to send. |
| Postscript | No. No first-party route. Only community MCP servers. |
| SimpleTexting | No. No first-party route. |
| SlickText | No. No. |
| Plivo | No. No. |
Official MCP serverIs there a first-party MCP server?Nitrosend: Yes.Textmagic: Yes.Telnyx: Yes.Postscript: No.SimpleTexting: No.SlickText: No.Plivo: Not a yes or no.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes. Listed as com.nitrosend/nitrosend on the official MCP registry. |
| Textmagic | Yes. Yes, with OAuth. |
| Telnyx | Yes. Yes, in its Node SDK. |
| Postscript | No. No. |
| SimpleTexting | No. No. |
| SlickText | No. No. |
| Plivo | Not a yes or no. A first-party repository, last updated in May 2025. |
Email and SMS on one contact recordDo email and text share one customer profile and one consent record?Nitrosend: No.Textmagic: Yes.Telnyx: No.Postscript: Not a yes or no.SimpleTexting: No.SlickText: No.Plivo: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | No. Not yet. Texting is coming soon and is not open to customers. |
| Textmagic | Yes. Yes. Contacts hold a phone number and an email address. |
| Telnyx | No. No. Email is a separate API with no shared contact record. |
| Postscript | Not a yes or no. Email is on a waitlist, so there is no email record yet. |
| SimpleTexting | No. No. It sells no email. |
| SlickText | No. No. It sells no email. |
| Plivo | No. No. It sells no email. |
SMS inside automated flowsCan an automated flow send a text as one of its steps?Nitrosend: No.Textmagic: Yes.Telnyx: No.Postscript: Yes.SimpleTexting: Yes.SlickText: Yes.Plivo: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | No. Not yet. Texting is coming soon and is not open to customers. |
| Textmagic | Yes. Yes, in automation flows. |
| Telnyx | No. No. Flows are yours to build. |
| Postscript | Yes. Yes, in its visual flow builder. |
| SimpleTexting | Yes. Yes, drip campaigns and auto-replies. |
| SlickText | Yes. Yes, in workflows. |
| Plivo | No. No. Flows are yours to build. |
Two-way textingCan customers reply, and can a person or agent answer them in the product?Nitrosend: No.Textmagic: Yes.Telnyx: Yes.Postscript: Yes.SimpleTexting: Yes.SlickText: Yes.Plivo: Yes.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | No. Not yet. Texting is coming soon and is not open to customers. |
| Textmagic | Yes. Yes, in a shared inbox. |
| Telnyx | Yes. Yes, inbound texts through the API. |
| Postscript | Yes. Yes. You can reply to texts from subscribers. |
| SimpleTexting | Yes. Yes. Replies are free and land in its inbox. |
| SlickText | Yes. Yes, in its inbox. |
| Plivo | Yes. Yes, inbound texts through the API. |
Published price per textIs a per-text US rate printed on the pricing page?Nitrosend: No.Textmagic: Yes.Telnyx: Yes.Postscript: Yes.SimpleTexting: Yes.SlickText: Not a yes or no.Plivo: Yes.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | No. No. Texting is not available yet, so there is no rate. |
| Textmagic | Yes. Yes. $0.049 a text to the US. |
| Telnyx | Yes. Yes. $0.004 a text part to the US. |
| Postscript | Yes. Yes. $0.009 a text on Starter. |
| SimpleTexting | Yes. Yes. Credits from 5.5 cents, less on bigger plans. |
| SlickText | Not a yes or no. Credit bundles, not a per-text rate. |
| Plivo | Yes. Yes. $0.0077 a text, on the Enterprise plan. |
Free plan with no time limitIs there a free plan that does not expire?Nitrosend: Yes.Textmagic: No.Telnyx: No.Postscript: No.SimpleTexting: No.SlickText: No.Plivo: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes. 5,000 emails to start, then 500 a month. |
| Textmagic | No. No. A free trial. |
| Telnyx | No. No. |
| Postscript | No. No. A free trial. |
| SimpleTexting | No. No. A free trial. |
| SlickText | No. No. A 14-day trial. |
| Plivo | No. No. |
Yes answersOut of the questions that have a yes or no for that service3 of 7 yes for Nitrosend6 of 7 yes for Textmagic3 of 6 yes for Telnyx3 of 6 yes for Postscript3 of 7 yes for SimpleTexting2 of 6 yes for SlickText2 of 6 yes for Plivo
At a glance
7 services, the same 7 tests, 100 points in all. In order: Nitrosend 76.5, Textmagic 53, Telnyx 50, Postscript 34.5, SimpleTexting 31, SlickText 31, Plivo 25.5. Nitrosend has the best score on Works from your AI assistant, Emails in your brand, no designer, Free plan and Receipts and newsletters on one plan. Every price and feature was read on each company's own pages on September 26, 2026.
When another service is the better pick
These scores measure email marketing run from an AI assistant, for a team that also sends texts. Nitrosend's texting is coming soon, so for texts you need to send today, and for programmable messaging, the services below are ahead of it. Read these before you choose.
- Stay on Twilio if you need voice, SIP, WhatsApp and SMS behind one API. It is the reference implementation of programmable messaging, and Nitrosend has no voice, SIP, WhatsApp, RCS or number management.
- Pick Telnyx if you only want a cheaper programmable SMS API. It publishes $0.004 a text part with no platform fee, against Twilio's $0.0083, both before the same carrier fees, and it holds its own telecom license rather than reselling one. It scores 10 on price here because its transactional Email API costs $0.30 per 1,000 or less, on beta rates.
- Pick Plivo if you are already large enough for its Enterprise plan. Texts are $0.0077 each, below Twilio, but its pricing page puts texting on Enterprise, from $1,000 a month.
- Pick Textmagic if you want business texting across borders on a pay-as-you-go balance. Its MCP connector sends texts to your lists from Claude or ChatGPT and shows the recipients, the text and the cost before each send, and it sells email campaigns from the same balance. At $0.049 a text it costs more per message than an API.
- Pick Postscript if you run a Shopify store and texting is a revenue channel. Its segments run on live store data, at $0.009 a text on Starter with a $49 monthly minimum, and its email product is still a waitlist on its pricing page.
- Pick SimpleTexting or SlickText if the person sending works in marketing, not in a terminal. Both have keyword sign-ups, drip campaigns and a reply inbox, with contacts unlimited, at $319 to $326 for 10,000 texts.
What each one costs in 2026
Twilio's US rate is $0.0083 a text segment on a long code, toll-free number or short code, plus carrier fees and a number. Its email is SendGrid, a second product: Marketing Campaigns is $60 a month at 10,000 contacts on Advanced, the first plan with automation, and a quote above 200,000 contacts. The first table prices the email side of each alternative, at the volumes used on every email comparison on this site. The second shows 10,000 US texts a month, which is not scored, because not every service publishes a rate. Nitrosend has no text rate because its texting is not available yet.
What sending costs
List prices, USD, monthly, September 26, 2026| Service | 20,000 emails a month | 1,000,000 emails a month |
|---|---|---|
| Nitrosend (pricing page) | $20Starter, contacts unlimited | $650Scale, contacts unlimited, including overage |
| Textmagic (pricing page) | $60$0.003 an email by its own FAQ. Its calculator shows $0.001 | $3,000$0.003 an email. The calculator stops at 500,000 |
| Telnyx (pricing page) | $5.40Lowest. Email API, $0.27 per 1,000 on the 10K to 50K tier, beta rates, transactional only | $170Lowest. Email API, $0.17 per 1,000 on the 500K to 1M tier, beta rates, transactional only |
| Postscript (pricing page) | WaitlistEmail is on a waitlist, with no price | WaitlistEmail is on a waitlist, with no price |
| SimpleTexting (pricing page) | No emailSells no email | No emailSells no email |
| SlickText (pricing page) | No emailSells no email | No emailSells no email |
| Plivo (pricing page) | No emailSells no email | No emailSells no email |
At 20,000 emails a month, Telnyx's Email API is $5.40 on its beta rates and Nitrosend $20, and Nitrosend is the lowest here with automated emails built in. Textmagic is $60 at $0.003 an email. Postscript's email is on a waitlist, and SimpleTexting, SlickText and Plivo sell no email.
At a million emails, Telnyx is $170, Nitrosend $650 and Textmagic $3,000.
What 10,000 texts cost
List prices, USD, monthly, September 26, 2026| Service | 10,000 US texts a month |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend (pricing page) | Not yet availableTexting is coming soon. Email only today |
| Textmagic (pricing page) | $490$0.049 a text, plus a $10 number |
| Telnyx (pricing page) | $40Lowest. $0.004 a text part, plus carrier fees and a $1 number |
| Postscript (pricing page) | $90Starter, $0.009 a text, plus carrier fees averaging $0.0033 |
| SimpleTexting (pricing page) | $326.507,500 credits for $229, 2,500 more at 3.5 cents, and a $10 number |
| SlickText (pricing page) | $31910,000 credits a month |
| Plivo (pricing page) | $1,000Enterprise, from $1,000 a month, which texting requires. Texts are $0.0077 each |
For 10,000 texts, Telnyx is $40 and Twilio $83, both before carrier fees. Postscript is $90 on Starter. The marketing tools cost $319 to $490, and they include the campaign tools a developer would otherwise build. Plivo's texting needs its Enterprise plan, from $1,000 a month.
How we scored
Every service gets a score out of 10 on the same seven tests. Each test is worth a set number of points, 100 in all. These are the tests and points used on every email marketing comparison on this site, applied here to a team that sends email and texts. Working from your AI assistant and price are worth the most, 20 points each. The editor and the integrations, support and track record share 30 points.
Each test is a question with one answer per service, checked against the service's own pages on September 26, 2026. A 10 means it does the job fully on its normal plans. A 5 means it does part of it, or only on a higher plan or in a second product.
Works from your AI assistant, 20 points. Can an agent inside Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex compose a marketing campaign, test it, and send it, with no person opening the web app between the prompt and the send? An approval step the person answers in the chat counts as inside the agent. Moving into the web app to finish does not. Scored on one written rule for every vendor: a first-party server the vendor runs and that can send counts fully; a third-party wrapper (Zapier, Composio, Kanopi, community servers) counts for less; a server that only drafts or reads counts for less than one that sends.
Emails in your brand, no designer, 10 points. Does the product learn your logo, colors, fonts and voice from your own site and apply them to every email it drafts, on the plan most small teams start on?
Price, 20 points. What does email cost each month at 20,000 emails, a 10,000-contact list emailed twice, and at 1,000,000, a 500,000-contact list emailed twice? Scored on list prices in US dollars, paid monthly, at the cheapest plan that holds the contacts, covers the sends and includes automated emails such as a welcome series. Every ranking on this site uses the same fixed scale. At 20,000 emails, $20 or less scores 10, then $25 scores 9, $32 scores 8, $40 scores 7, $50 scores 6, $70 scores 5, $100 scores 4 and $140 scores 3. At 1,000,000, $500 or less scores 10, then $625, $800, $1,000, $1,250, $1,750, $2,500 and $3,500 step down the same way. Anything dearer, or a price given only by quote, scores 2. A free product scores 10. The score is the average of the two. A service that sells no email scores 0. Text message prices are shown in the price table but not scored, because not every service here publishes one. Nitrosend has no text rate because its texting is not available yet.
Free plan, 10 points. How far can a team get on the free plan before it has to pay: contacts, total sends, and the daily ceiling.
Receipts and newsletters on one plan, 10 points. Can receipts, password resets and newsletters go out from one account, on one bill, through one API?
Editor for building by hand, 15 points. For a person who wants to build the email themselves: how mature are the visual editor and the template library?
Integrations, support and track record, 15 points. How many tools does it plug into, what support comes with the plan, and how long has it been doing this at scale?
Scoring messaging APIs on email marketing tests is a choice, and it decides the order. Telnyx and Plivo have no editor, so they score 1 on the editor test. A service that sells no email scores 0 on price, whatever its text rate. If all you want is a programmable SMS API, Telnyx is the pick, and the order above does not change that. Text prices and inbox placement are not scored, and no test scores whether a service's texting is live. Nitrosend's texting is coming soon, so its score rests on the email side and the assistant alone, and the yes-or-no table marks its texting rows as not yet available. Twilio itself is not ranked, because this page is about what replaces it. Vonage is not scored because its US text rate could not be read on September 26, 2026.
Why people leave Twilio
Three things, and none of them is the API.
A2P 10DLC registration. Before a US long code can send application-to-person traffic, the brand and the campaign have to be registered with the carriers through The Campaign Registry. Every US provider enforces it. What Twilio owns is the experience: a queue you cannot see into, rejections that arrive as codes, and a number that works in testing and then does not in production. On October 2, 2026 Twilio's 10DLC fee page listed standard brand registration at $46 one-time, campaign vetting at $15, and a monthly campaign fee from $1.50 to $10 by use case. The same page says The Campaign Registry raised its standard fees on August 1, 2025 and now charges $12.50 for each retry of the Authentication Plus step for public, for-profit brands. That matters once an AI assistant files the paperwork: an agent that keeps retrying that step after an error pays on every attempt, so have it stop and show you the error after the first one.
Carrier fees that move without you. The $0.0083 base rate is not the number on your invoice. Twilio's US pricing page adds a per-segment carrier fee on a long code of $0.0035 at AT&T, $0.0045 at T-Mobile and $0.005 at Verizon, plus $0.001 on each failed message and the number rental, and says carrier fees change from time to time without notice. Twilio sat at 1.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot on October 2, 2026, and a Hacker News thread from October 2, 2024 summed up the developer side as "10DLC is a nightmare".
The bill is per segment, and a segment is not a message. A text over 160 standard characters, or over 70 with a single emoji or curly quote, bills as two. Twilio's own example is a 140-character message with one non-standard character, which splits into two segments. AI assistants write curly quotes, long dashes and ellipsis characters by habit, so a text your assistant drafted can cost double a text you typed. Twilio's Smart Encoding setting swaps some of those characters for plain ones. Before you move, ask whether the new service does the same, or tell your assistant to write straight quotes and plain hyphens in every text.
Texting on Nitrosend is coming soon
Texting on Nitrosend is coming soon. It is not open to customers today, and no launch date or text rate is published. What Nitrosend does today is email: campaigns, flows and single transactional emails, driven by an AI assistant over MCP, the same way it drives the email API. Campaigns and flows stay drafts until they are approved; a single transactional email sends on the call, as the MCP docs describe. Contacts are unlimited on every plan.
- Texts stay on Twilio or another texting service for now. Until Nitrosend's texting opens, a team that moves its email keeps its texts where they are.
- The 10DLC work still happens. Whatever sends your texts, nobody can remove carrier registration.
- No voice, SIP, WhatsApp, RCS or number management. For any of those, a communications platform wins.
How to move off Twilio without losing delivery
Text delivery and email deliverability are different systems, and if you send both you protect both.
- Export your consent records first. Take the sign-up timestamps and the wording people agreed to before you touch anything. That record is your legal position.
- Register with the new provider while the old one still sends. Brand and campaign registration is tied to the provider that filed it, so moving means registering again, and you pay the registration fees again.
- Carry your STOP list out of Twilio. When someone texts STOP, Twilio's opt-out docs say it adds the number to a block list it checks before every send, and later texts to that number fail with error 21610. That list lives in Twilio, not in your database. Pull the numbers that replied STOP, and any that returned 21610, from your message logs and keep them out of any import. Many tools treat an imported number as consent to text it, so the list has to be clean before it moves.
- Port numbers one at a time. Start with the lowest-volume number, and check replies and STOP handling on each before moving the next. Long codes and toll-free numbers are portable, and short codes are slower and cost more.
- Keep Twilio for voice if you still need it. Voice and SIP are where Twilio is hardest to replace, so port only the messaging numbers.
- Treat an email move as its own project. Add both senders to one SPF record, follow the email authentication steps, warm the domain and run an inbox test before the first campaign. The SendGrid alternatives page covers the email half, and the SMS marketing tools list covers the texting half.
Twilio alternatives FAQ
For a team whose texts sit alongside its email, Nitrosend, with the top score here, 76.5 out of 100: email run from an AI assistant at $20 a month for 20,000, with texting coming soon. For a cheaper programmable SMS API, Telnyx. For a Shopify store, Postscript. For texting run by a marketer, SimpleTexting or SlickText.
On US list price it sits above Telnyx at $0.004 and Plivo at $0.0077, at $0.0083 a segment. Carrier fees are the same whichever provider you use, because they are the carriers' fees, and number rental and 10DLC fees come on top everywhere.
Nitrosend, with 9 out of 10 on working from your AI assistant. Its official MCP server writes email campaigns and flows from the chat as drafts that send once approved, and sends a single transactional email on the call; texting is coming soon. Textmagic scores 7: its MCP connector for Claude and ChatGPT sends and schedules texts to your lists and asks you to confirm each send, with the cost shown. Telnyx and Plivo score 5, because their MCP servers wrap the API with no campaign to send. EZ Texting also publishes an MCP server, and Twilio Labs publishes one that exposes Twilio's APIs. Check whether a send needs a person's approval, because an agent with unchecked send rights on a channel that costs money per message is a bill waiting to happen.
Add Nitrosend as a connector in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex using its MCP server at api.nitrosend.com/mcp, and sign in with OAuth. Then ask in plain words, for example "send new sign-ups a welcome email, wait two days, then send a follow-up email". The assistant builds that as a flow draft, and nothing goes to your list until it is approved. A single receipt or other transactional email sends on the call. Texting is coming soon, so until it opens the texts stay on a separate service.
On Twilio's published ladder, read on October 2, 2026, $46 one-time for standard brand registration, $15 for campaign vetting, then a monthly campaign fee from $1.50 to $10 by use case. Twilio says it passes them through at no added cost, because the registry and the carriers set them, so they follow you to any provider. What differs is how much of the filing the provider does for you.
Not for programmable messaging. Nitrosend's texting is coming soon and is not open to customers yet, so it can replace SendGrid on the email side but not Twilio's texts today. It has no programmable voice, SIP, WhatsApp, RCS or number management. If your job is any of those, pick a communications platform.
Usually. US long codes and toll-free numbers can move between providers, short codes can too but more slowly and at more cost, and international numbers vary by country. Confirm each number before you sign.
Go deeper
Other SMS lists
Leaving the email side too