SMS Marketing Cost, Plus What Email Marketing Costs
SMS marketing cost runs about $12 per 1,000 messages sent, once carrier fees are counted, while email marketing cost is billed by contact, from free at 250 contacts to $350 a month. Done for you, Ziwi's email and SMS nurture is $297 or $597 a month.
Two plans, month to month
- $297/moNurture Starter
- $597/moNurture
vsSoftware you run yourself$0 to $350 a month, plus about $12 per 1,000 texts
Follow-up sequences wired to your forms and calls, plus campaigns written every month.
See how we compareMost pricing pages for email marketing quote the software and stop there, which is why the first invoice surprises people. About 360 searches a month go to this question in our September 2026 pull: "email marketing cost" at 210, "how much does email marketing cost" at 140 and "sms marketing cost per message" at 10. Below is every line that shows up on a real bill: the platform, the sending, the carrier registration nobody mentions, and what it costs to have somebody write and run it instead of you.
See the full email and SMS nurture page
How much does email and SMS marketing cost?
There are two bills, not one. Software runs $0 to $350 a month depending on how many contacts you hold, and text messages cost roughly $12 per 1,000 sent once carrier fees are added to the sending rate.
Having the sequences built, the campaigns written and the list looked after is the other bill: Ziwi's Nurture Starter is $297 a month and Nurture is $597 a month.
| What you are paying for | Published price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Ziwi Nurture Starter | $297 a month | New-lead follow-up sequences wired to your forms and calls, plus one campaign a month, written and sent for you |
| Ziwi Nurture | $597 a month | Adds reactivation and repeat-business campaigns, registered text messaging, and list cleaning |
| Email platform (Mailchimp published tiers) | Free to 250 contacts, Essentials from $13 a month, Standard from $20, Premium $350 | The software only. Price steps up through published contact bands: 0 to 500, 501 to 1,500, 1,501 to 2,500, 2,501 to 5,000, 5,001 to 10,000 and beyond |
| Text sending (Twilio published US rates) | $0.0083 per message segment out, plus a carrier fee of $0.0035 (AT&T) to $0.0045 (T-Mobile) | Sending only, which works out to about $12 per 1,000 messages |
| A2P 10DLC registration | $15 one-time campaign vetting, a small one-time brand fee, then roughly $1.50 to $10 a month per campaign | Required by US carriers before a business can text customers from a 10-digit number |
| Your time | Not on anyone's price list | Writing, segmenting, consent, testing, list hygiene, and reading the results. The line that decides whether the others were worth paying |
Platform prices read from mailchimp.com/pricing and twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us on 3 September 2026. Carrier fees and A2P fees are set by the mobile carriers and the registry, not by the software vendor, so they appear on every provider's bill in some form.
Why does an email platform charge more as your list grows?
Because platforms price per contact, not per send. Mailchimp's published bands step at 500, 1,500, 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 contacts, so a list that doubles moves you up a rung whether or not you email more people. Its free plan stops at 250 contacts and its Premium plan is $350 a month, which is the range most small businesses live inside.
Two consequences are worth knowing before you pick a platform. Dead contacts cost money: a list full of addresses that have not opened anything in two years is a monthly charge for nothing, which is why list cleaning is part of Nurture at $597 a month. And the software is the small number.
A $20 subscription nobody writes for produces nothing, and that is the most common way a small business wastes money on email.
What does SMS actually cost per message?
About $0.012 per message segment in the United States. Twilio publishes $0.0083 to send an outbound segment, and the carriers add their own fee on top: $0.0035 for AT&T and $0.0045 for T-Mobile as of September 2026. That is roughly $12 per 1,000 texts.
The catch is the word segment: a message over 160 characters is billed as more than one.
- Segments, not messages. 160 characters is one segment. Add an emoji or a special character and the limit drops to 70, so a chatty three-line text can bill as two or three.
- Inbound is billable too. Twilio publishes $0.0083 for messages coming in, so replies cost money. That is fine: replies are the point.
- Failures still cost. Twilio publishes a $0.001 fee on messages that fail to deliver, which is another reason list quality shows up on the invoice.
- The number is its own line. A dedicated business number rents monthly on every platform, separate from what you send through it.
Want the follow-up run for you?
What is A2P 10DLC registration and do I have to do it?
Yes, if you want to text customers from a 10-digit business number in the United States. A2P 10DLC is the registration US carriers require before they will carry business text traffic: you register the business, called the brand, and the specific messaging program, called the campaign. Twilio's published schedule puts campaign vetting at $15 one time and the recurring campaign fee between roughly $1.50 and $10 a month by use case, on top of a small one-time brand registration fee.
Skipping it is not a working option. Unregistered traffic gets filtered or blocked, so the texts you paid to send never arrive and you find out from the silence. Registration takes days rather than minutes and needs real business details: legal name, EIN, address, and the exact consent wording on your form. Ziwi handles registration inside Nurture at $597 a month, which is what registered text messaging means on that plan.
Is done-for-you cheaper than doing it yourself?
It depends whose hour you are counting. The software is $13 to $350 a month. The work is writing the sequences, segmenting the list, getting consent right, testing, and reading what came back, which runs somewhere between four and twenty hours a month for a typical local business. Nurture Starter at $297 a month is that whole job done for you, platform work included.
| Line item | Doing it yourself | Nurture Starter, $297 | Nurture, $597 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly software | $13 to $350 by list size | Handled | Handled |
| Who writes the emails | You | Ziwi | Ziwi |
| New-lead follow-up sequences | You build and wire them | Built and wired to your forms and calls | Built and wired to your forms and calls |
| Campaigns a month | However many you get to | One | Reactivation and repeat-business campaigns on top |
| Text messaging | You register A2P yourself | Not included | Registered text messaging included |
| List cleaning | You | Not included | Included |
| Commitment | Cancel the software anytime | Month to month | Month to month |
How do you know the follow-up made money?
By counting booked work, not opens. A follow-up sequence earns its keep when a quote that went quiet turns into a signed job and a customer from two years ago books again, and both of those are countable. Ziwi includes call tracking and reporting in every plan, so a reactivation campaign that produces four calls and two jobs shows up that way instead of as an open rate. Anything that replies gets answered in seconds by Ziwi Engage from $99 a month, which is what stops a warm reply from going cold on a Saturday.
Which plan should a small business start with?
Start with Nurture Starter at $297 a month if the problem is that new leads go quiet, and step up to Nurture at $597 if you have an old list worth waking up or you need to text. If texting is the whole point, read SMS marketing for small business first, because the registration work comes before the first message. When you want it built, written and sent for you, Ziwi's email and SMS nurture service publishes both prices and runs month to month, like everything else on the pricing page.