ClickSend vs. TextMagic - The Best Choice?
Business Communication, through SMS, MMS, and Email is essential to reach existing and new customers and build a relationship with them. This is crucial for growth, and if done right, the rewards are insane.
There are dozens of Platform options out there, and you have narrowed it down to ClickSend and TextMagic. So, which one is your best bet? Which platform delivers the best fit for the unique requirement that your business has?
In this comprehensive guide, we will cover and compare the features both of them bring, how much they charge, and what real users feel about the service offered.
By the end of this article, you will definitely be able to have a clear image of which platform suits your business best.
About ClickSend
ClickSend is a Business Communication Platform that allows you to communicate with your customers and staff via SMS, email, rich media, and direct mail. ClickSend has been around for almost 10 years and has around 90,000 small and medium-sized businesses using the platform. ClickSend allows you to start your communications through their dashboard or API, but no app is available.
About TextMagic
TextMagic is a Text Message Marketing Platform that allows you to communicate with your customers via SMS. One of the oldest players in this category, TextMagic has been here since 2001 and is preferred by small businesses that need a Text Message Marketing tool and nothing else.
Both ClickSend and TextMagic have been key players in the industry for a long time, but this also means they adopt necessary features way later than when required. More on that when we conclude on which Business Communication Platform you should choose between ClickSend and TextMagic.
ClickSend vs TextMagic - Things to Consider
Business Communication plays an important part in the journey of a customer and helps you make their lifecycle more engaging and resourceful. To make the most out of a Business Communication Platform, here’s a ready-to-use checklist of things you should consider before making your pick:
Features – Your choice of Platform should possess features that add convenience and help your business with growth. These include bulk text messaging, group texting features, automation and sequences, etc. to name a few. Some essential features to consider are:
2-way text messaging: 2-way text messaging allows you to respond to your customers over text. This can range from anywhere between queries and questions to booking appointments and requests for certain services.
Group text messaging: Group text messaging allows you to create groups that you can text to directly. You can add your colleagues to a chat or have multiple customers texting you on a single chat thread.
MMS texting: MMS, multimedia messaging, or rich-text messaging allows you to send images, videos, etc to make your conversations with customers more engaging.
Campaign Management: Campaign Management allows you to set up multiple Text Messaging Campaigns, track engagement, and run A/B tests. It is essential to understand how well your campaign is working.
Missed call to text: An important text management feature is missed calls to text. This feature converts missed calls from your customers to text messages with automated replies. You can also respond immediately or plan it for later. Missed customers because of missed calls are a thing of the past (not that we miss it).
Broadcast/Bulk SMS: Bulk SMS is a great tool if you want to inform a large group of customers about any promotional campaign you’re running.
Schedule-based text: You can set up schedule-based texts to send texts at the right time. Need to inform customers about the Holiday season offers? With schedule-based texts, you can set up the texts today and the texts will be sent just when you want them to – Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Text follow-ups: With this feature, your business can send automated reminders asking for reviews, the reason for cancellations, payment updates and requests, birthday wishes, and information about upcoming appointments are all automated.
Some other notable features you should look out for include:
Automation and Sequences: Automation allows for trigger-based texts. This reduces the manual effort businesses need to put in to reply to texts.
Assigning conversations: Customer messages can be assigned to different team members or different teams.
ClickSend vs TextMagic - Feature Comparison
Now that you have an idea of the essential features that you need to keep your eyes out for in the Business Communication Platform of your choice. Since you are considering ClickSend and TextMagic, we’ve compiled a feature-by-feature comparison between both platforms along with their pros and cons.
This comparison guides you in making an informed decision and picking the right software for your business.
Here are some of the bare minimum features any business should expect from a communication platform and how ClickSend and TextMagic fare in it:
Feature Review:
After checking the features of both ClickSend and TextMagic, here are some observations we have:
- TextMagic is more feature-rich when compared to ClickSend.
- Essential features like Group Texts, Text-Follow Ups, and Unlimited Contacts and Users are missing from both ClickSend and TextMagic.
- TextMagic lacks features like Omni Channel Texting and Email to Text which are present in ClickSend.
- ClickSend lacks features like Campaign Management and Engagement Tracking which are present in TextMagic.
- Both ClickSend and TextMagic lack Live 24/7 support which can be an essential feature for peace of mind about the service.
Both ClickSend and TextMagic have been around for a long time, with TextMagic being as old as Text Messaging, but the lack of some features like Text Forwarding, Unlimited Contacts, and Group Texts makes us question how they can provide a holistic Business Communication Platform in 2023.
ClickSend vs TextMagic - Ratings & Reviews
Ratings and reviews are crucial to understanding how users feel about the product.
Ratings
Let us take a look at the ratings of ClickSend and TextMagic to understand how businesses feel about the product. Capterra, the #1 website for choosing better software, has the following ratings for the two platforms:
Overall Rating: The Overall Rating takes into consideration multiple aspects of the lifecycle of the products – from deployment to use to customer support.
ClickSend is rated at 3.9 stars
TextMagic is rated at 4.6 stars
Let’s break down what contributed to the higher rating of TextMagic when compared to ClickSend.
Ease of Use: Ease of use can be defined by a few important characteristics-
How easy is it to deploy the product
How easy is it for you and your employees to run campaigns
How customers receive the text messages (relevance, punctuality, etc)
The end-user experience of the product
How streamlined the dashboard is
The Ease of Use Rating for ClickSend is 3.8 stars, while TextMagic has 4.7 stars. This illustrates TextMagic is the Easier to Use Platform of the two ensuring a very small learning curve for your team.
Features: Both platforms come with a bunch of essential business communication features.
The feature rating for ClickSend is 3.9 stars while TextMagic is 4.4 stars.
Value for Money: Pricing is a major consideration when choosing alternatives. Are you paying a fair amount? Is the pricing justified for the features your business needs? Let’s take a look at the pricing of both platforms
*ClickSend pricing estimate for 10,000 SMS + 100 MMS
*TextMagic pricing estimate for 10,000 SMS + 100 MMS
TextMagic scores higher than ClickSend in the value-for-money category. This is primarily due to the price being lower for the same number of SMS and MMS that your business can send out.
Here are some ways they both stand out from each other:
The pricing based on individual texts means that a bulk SMS campaign can rack up the charges to a high amount.
Customer Service: Whether it’s Onboarding, Account Management, TroubleShooting, or resolving Technical Issues, the software of your choice should have robust customer support that answers your queries and solves your problems in seconds – not days!
The Customer Service rating for ClickSend is 4.0 stars while TextMagic is rated at 4.5 stars.
Likelihood to Recommend: “A strong likelihood to recommend reflects the true value a product or service brings to its users.”
The likelihood to recommend score for ClickSend is 68 and TextMagic is 87.
TextMagic here has a higher rating across all aspects, with a great likelihood to recommend rating. But where do they lack? What are their shortcomings? Let’s check some real user reviews and figure out.
ClickSend vs TextMagic - Reviews
Reviews are crucial to understanding what customers say about the product.
ClickSend
Pros according to Users:
Easy to set up details of team members.
Easy to track the number of outgoing texts.
It is easy to set up a specific phone number, which is important if not all employees can access a computer.
The product website is well-designed
Cons according to Users:
Texts can fail, and you will still be charged for it.
Customer support is inaccessible even with the 24/7 promise.
The onboarding process involves multiple levels of paperwork and still not be completed without any reason.
Some options are not properly described leading to confusion.
The first level of customer support often fails to resolve any issue due to a lack of knowledge about the product.
Some core options of a good SMS platform are missing.
TextMagic
Pros according to Users:
Easy to use with lots of features.
Text Message campaigns can be scheduled very easily.
Features relevant to SMS marketing are present.
Cons according to Users:
Scheduled texts often fail to be sent on time and get delivered very late.
Text Messages fail to send but TextMagic still charges for them resulting in wrong billing.
Some formats of messages are not supported in inbound messages, and users are not informed of this issue.
The Better Choice - ClickSend vs TextMagic
Both ClickSend and TextMagic might be great when put in isolation, but the real users’ reviews make their flaws pop out.
On one side we have TextMagic which has more features than ClickSend and is also cheaper. On the flip side, ClickSend does more than text messaging – providing you with features like email-to-text.
So which one do you choose for your business?
If your business is looking for a Business Communication Platform that:
- Can send texts for cheap
- Is easy to use, and
- Is an old brand that has proven itself
Then your go-to option should be TextMagic.
If your business is looking for something more, like:
- The ability to automatically use email campaigns as Text Campaigns
- Allows you to add teammates with ease, and
- Allows you to check how many texts you have used in the billing cycle easily
Then, the option that suits your requirements best is ClickSend.
But, if your business wants anything more (in terms of features and services) that are necessary today like Missed Calls to Text, Unlimited Messages, group text messaging, and allows you to send unlimited texts, then you need to look beyond ClickSend and TextMagic.
Let us introduce you to Emitrr – a communication and reputation management tool that is designed to be the go-to choice for any business looking for a Business Communication Platform but with added benefits at a fraction of the price.
Emitrr is a young and dynamic startup that is challenging behemoths like ClickSend and TextMaguc by providing better features at significantly cheaper pricing. Emitrr was built in 2019 considering the shortcomings of these legacy Business Communication Platforms, but you don’t have to take our word for it.
Here’s what real users have rated Emitrr, ClickSend, and TextMagic on Capterra, giving you a glimpse of which is the better service provider for your needs:
The reasons for high ratings:
Ease of use: Both Emitrr and TextMagic are rated at 4.5+ stars, illustrating that both are Easier to Use compared to ClickSend, and ensuring a minimal learning curve for your team.
Customer Service: Emitrr provides 24/7 live support in the form of calls, messages, chats, and emails (Tickets), along with a full-fledged knowledge base on Youtube allowing it to edge out TextMagic which apparently has great service even without 24/7 support, allowing it to score the highest-rating of 5 stars in customer service. ClickSends’ support even though promising 24/7 is supposedly not up to the mark.
Features: Emitrr offers a tailored feature list according to your business’s unique requirements – charging for features that you use and nothing more.
Value for Money: At $149-$249, Emitrr offers all the significant features of both ClickSend and TextMagic, adding on some unique features driven through extensive research of the Customer Journey while keeping the costs manageable and flexible. You only pay for what you use with Emitrr with completely customizable plans.
*ClickSend pricing estimate for 10,000 SMS + 100 MMS
*TextMagic pricing estimate for 10,000 SMS + 100 MMS
*Emitrr pricing for the base plan – unlimited SMS + MMS
Let’s take a peek at what users say about Emitrr:
Emitrr
Key Pros:
Feature-rich with a high level of customization
Value for money
Tailored for every business’s unique requirements
Responsive Customer Service Team
Constantly adding features for a better user experience
Completely HIPPA compliant
Streamlines daily interactions with clients
ClickSend vs TextMagic vs Emitrr - Overall Comparison
Let’s see how the three software stack against each other in terms of features –
Emitrr: The Better Choice over ClickSend and TextMagic
After comparing the features, ratings, reviews, pros and cons, and pricing we can conclude that Emitrr is the better choice when compared to ClickSend and TextMagic:
Emitrr has great support with a live representative available to help you no matter what time it is.
Unlike ClickSend and TextMagic, Emitrr provides Business Communication features along with features like review management, call management, and location-based interaction that help you cover the whole lifecycle of the customer at a much more competitive pricing.
Emitrr has unique features like:
Missed Calls to Text
Webchat to text
Text Follow-Ups
Schedule-based texting
Group Text Messaging
Highly Customizable Deployment
While TextMagic does not support Omni Channel Messaging with Emitrr, you can set up Omni Channel Messaging helping you cut down costs and save big bucks.
Emitrr offers businesses to choose the features they want to use, and only charges for them.
Being a young dynamic startup also means that Emitrr introduces features faster than any competition out there helping you stay on top of the marketing game.
Conclusion
The right Text Message Marketing software for your business depends on a lot of factors, but if you were considering ClickSend or TextMagic, maybe you need to rethink your options and check out Emitrr.
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