Mass Texting Pricing 2026: The A2P 10DLC Fees Nobody Quotes You
Textedly charges an $8/month telecom fee, SimpleTexting's 10DLC fee is a flat $4, and EZ Texting waives fees only above its cheapest tier. Real 2026 pricing compared.
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What business texting actually costs, once every fee lands
A $29-a-month mass texting plan and a $500-a-month one can run on the exact same underlying fee stack: a one-time brand and campaign registration filed with The Campaign Registry (TCR), a recurring monthly campaign fee, and a per-message carrier surcharge that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon each charge on every A2P 10DLC text delivered to their networks. None of that appears as a single line item on a vendor's pricing page, it is split across a signup-flow disclosure, a help-center article, and the monthly invoice. We pulled the current 2026 fee schedule directly from Twilio's published A2P 10DLC documentation (the compliance infrastructure most of these platforms run on) and re-checked the live pricing pages and help centers of four consumer-facing mass texting vendors, Textedly, SimpleTexting, EZ Texting, and SlickText, on 2026-09-30 to show what actually lands on an invoice beyond the advertised "starting at" number. The pricing pages used are SimpleTexting, EZ Texting Boost and Launch tiers, SlickText and Textedly.
| Vendor | Cheapest paid tier | Telecom/carrier surcharge | 10DLC registration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Textedly | $29/mo, 500 texts (600 if billed annually) | $8/mo on every plan, per its help center | Textedly pays it for your first 10DLC number |
| SimpleTexting | $39/mo: $29 for 500 credits plus $10 for a local number | None disclosed beyond carrier pass-through | $4 flat, one-time |
| EZ Texting | $20/mo billed annually ($25 monthly), 500 contacts (Launch) | $5/mo on Launch only; waived from Boost ($60/mo annual) up | Included in plan price |
| SlickText | $29/mo, 500 credits | No flat fee; blended $0.0042 per SMS carrier pass-through | Not separately itemized on pricing page |
The three-layer fee stack behind every 10DLC text
A2P 10DLC (Application-to-Person messaging over 10-digit long code numbers) is the compliance system US carriers require for business texting sent from a standard local phone number. The fees exist in three layers, and only the first is fully inside a vendor's control. Layer one is TCR brand and campaign registration: a US A2P Sole Proprietor or Low Volume Standard brand costs $4.50 one-time, while a Standard brand (needed for higher-volume senders) costs $46 one-time and includes mandatory secondary vetting. On top of that, each messaging campaign requires a $15 one-time vetting fee plus a recurring monthly campaign fee that ranges from $1.50/month (low-volume mixed use) to $10/month (Standard use case), billed for as long as the campaign stays active [Twilio, "Pricing and Fees for A2P 10DLC Service," verified 2026-08-09]. TCR raised several of these fees on August 1, 2025: Standard Vetting went from $40 to $41.50, Brand Registration from $4 to $4.50, Vetting Appeal from $10 to $11, and a new Authentication Plus fee of $12.50 per retry now applies to public for-profit brands that fail identity verification on the first attempt.
Layer two is the per-message carrier fee, charged by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon on every A2P 10DLC segment sent to their networks, on top of whatever the messaging platform itself charges. As of 2026-09-30 the registered 10DLC SMS rates are $0.0035 (AT&T), $0.0045 (T-Mobile) and $0.0045 (Verizon), with Verizon rising to $0.0050 on October 1 [Bandwidth, "Carrier surcharges," verified 2026-09-30]. Layer three is the platform's own markup and plan structure, the part that actually varies vendor to vendor and is the only layer a comparison shopper has real control over. Vendors that say they "never mark up" carrier fees, as both SimpleTexting and SlickText state in their own pricing FAQs, are describing layer two specifically, not layers one or three.
Every big carrier has raised its cut this year
Carrier fees are not static, and 2026 has been an unusually busy year for them. Effective January 19, 2026, T-Mobile raised its pass-through fee for outbound 10DLC SMS from $0.0030 to $0.0045 per message segment, a 50% increase, and the change extended to US Cellular numbers after T-Mobile absorbed that carrier in 2025. AT&T followed: its registered 10DLC SMS fee is $0.0035 per segment from April 1, 2026, and its 10DLC MMS fee is $0.0090. Verizon moved to $0.0045 for SMS on May 1 and has announced $0.0050 from October 1, its second increase in five months [Bandwidth, "Carrier surcharges," verified 2026-09-30; Telgorithm, Verizon fee announcement, 2026-08-13]. Put together, a registered 10DLC text now costs between $0.0035 and $0.0050 per segment depending on which network the recipient is on. No vendor signup page lists any of this, because the changes landed after most of those pages were last edited.
EZ Texting's "no hidden fees" claim has an asterisk
EZ Texting markets itself with the tagline "no hidden fees" on its pricing page, and its Boost, Scale, and Enterprise tiers do waive the telecom fee outright. But its cheapest tier, Launch, at $20/month billed annually or $25 month to month (500 contacts, 6,000 yearly credits), is explicitly listed as "Subject to Telecom Fee" on the same pricing page, while Boost at $60/month annual ($75 monthly) is listed as "Waived Telecom Fee". The pricing FAQ puts the Launch fee at $5/month, and says customers texting from 10-digit numbers have all other carrier fees included in the plan price, which sets EZ Texting apart from the pass-through model the other three use [EZ Texting pricing page, verified 2026-09-30]. That means the plan most likely to attract a first-time small-business buyer, the cheapest one, is also the one where the telecom fee is not waived. A shopper who reads only the headline "no hidden fees" and picks Launch will still see a telecom line item on the invoice; the fee-free promise only kicks in once they upgrade to a plan roughly three times the price, though on Boost and above the carrier pass-through is folded into the plan too, so the gap narrows for higher-volume senders.
Why the carrier fee itself isn't the scam
Two different complaints get lumped together under "hidden SMS fees," and they are not the same problem. One is legitimate frustration at vendors that bury a mandatory monthly surcharge, Textedly's $8/month telecom fee applies to every paid plan, per a Textedly help-center article dated March 2025 and still live on 2026-09-30, while the pricing page now stresses that Textedly pays the registration cost for your first 10DLC number [Textedly Help Center, "Telecom"; see our full Textedly review for the complete fee breakdown]. The other is the per-message carrier surcharge itself, which is not a vendor markup, it is a fee set by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon and passed through unchanged. SimpleTexting states this directly in its own pricing FAQ: "we never mark these up," and SlickText makes the identical claim in its own FAQ. Both companies would have a financial incentive to inflate this fee if they could get away with it; industry-wide carrier-fee transparency requirements and competitive pressure from vendors that publish their exact pass-through rate make this a legitimate cost, distinct from a surcharge a vendor chooses to add on top.
SlickText is the only one of the four that puts an exact number on this in writing: its help center states a flat $0.0042 per SMS segment and $0.0087 per MMS for US 10DLC, toll-free and short code numbers, billed in arrears from the period's send volume [SlickText Help Center, "Understanding Carrier Fees," verified 2026-09-30]. That figure sits between AT&T's $0.0035 and the $0.0045 T-Mobile and Verizon charge, which is expected, SlickText's rate is a blended average across carriers, not a single-carrier price, and the company says it may update it as carriers change theirs (Verizon's October 1 rise is a candidate). It is also the only piece of fee documentation SlickText publishes with a specific rate attached; its 10DLC registration and campaign fees are not itemized anywhere on the public pricing page, so a buyer only sees that number after signing up and registering a brand. Textedly's $8/month telecom fee and SlickText's $0.0042/message rate are not directly comparable line items, one is a flat monthly charge regardless of volume, the other scales with how many texts actually go out, which means a low-volume sender (under roughly 1,900 messages a month, where 1,900 times $0.0042 crosses $8) comes out ahead on SlickText's model even before touching the base plan price.
A worksheet for your real monthly bill
Run this against your own numbers before comparing "starting at" prices across vendors. (1) Start with the base plan price for your expected monthly send volume. (2) Add the vendor's mandatory telecom/carrier surcharge, if any, confirmed against the specific tier you are buying, not just the vendor's general marketing claim. (3) Add $10-20/month for each additional local number or teammate seat beyond what the base plan includes. (4) Add the per-message carrier pass-through, roughly $0.0035-$0.0050 per segment depending on which carriers your contacts are on, multiplied by your expected monthly send volume. (5) Amortize the one-time TCR brand and campaign fee ($19-$61 depending on brand type) across 12 months if you want a true monthly run rate.
Example: a small business on SimpleTexting's 500-credit plan sees $39/month on the pricing calculator, which already includes one local number ($29 for credits plus $10 for the number). Add a second local number ($10/month) and 500 texts a month at $0.0042 per segment (SlickText's published blended rate, used here as a stand-in for a typical carrier mix) and the bill is $39 + $10 + $2.10 = $51.10/month, about 31% above the advertised $39 sticker price, before a second teammate seat if the team needs one. On Textedly's $29 Basic plan the mandatory $8 telecom fee alone makes it $37/month, about 28% above the sticker, before any per-message carrier pass-through.
Frequently asked questions
What is A2P 10DLC and why do I have to pay extra for it?
A2P 10DLC is the compliance framework US wireless carriers mandate for texts sent from a regular 10-digit local line rather than a short code. It exists to reduce spam and fraud on business-to-consumer texting, and the registration and per-message fees are set by TCR and the carriers themselves, not by whichever texting vendor you sign up with, per the fee schedule Twilio itself publishes for A2P 10DLC (verified 2026-08-09).
How much do the TCR brand fee and the campaign fee add up to?
A brand filed as Sole Proprietor, or the lighter-touch tier TCR reserves for low-volume senders, runs $4.50 as a one-time charge; a Standard-tier brand runs $46 as a one-time charge and requires an added identity-vetting step. Registering the campaign itself adds a further $15, billed once as a vetting charge, and then $1.50-$10 keeps billing every month depending on the campaign's use case, for as long as that campaign remains active, per Twilio's own fee schedule (verified 2026-08-09).
Why did my per-text carrier charge go up recently?
All three big US carriers raised what they charge per registered business text in 2026. T-Mobile went first in January, AT&T followed on April 1 and Verizon on May 1, and Verizon has another increase due at the start of October, per the rate table Bandwidth publishes for its messaging customers (verified 2026-09-30).
Does EZ Texting really have no hidden fees?
Only from its Boost tier, priced at $60 a month on annual billing, and up. Its Launch tier, EZ Texting's lowest-priced option, priced at $20 a month on annual billing, still carries a $5 monthly telecom charge, per the fee status shown next to each plan and the pricing FAQ on EZ Texting's own pricing page, despite the site's "no hidden fees" tagline applying to the brand as a whole (verified 2026-09-30).
Can I negotiate away the carrier's per-text charge?
No. The major US wireless carriers set these rates themselves and apply them the same way no matter which texting vendor you use. SlickText and SimpleTexting both publish, in the FAQ section of their own pricing pages, that they pass these fees through at cost with no markup, which is the honest baseline to expect from any vendor, the fee itself is not avoidable by switching platforms.
Which vendor has the lowest real cost for a small business sending under 1,000 texts a month?
At that volume, SlickText's starting tier, $29 a month, carries no disclosed mandatory fee outside of what the carriers themselves pass through, putting it below Textedly's same-priced plan once you factor in the $8 Textedly bills separately every month for telecom. If your team already pays for a business phone system, check whether texting is bundled before adding a dedicated platform, our small business phone system comparison and Grasshopper review cover providers that include business texting on their base plans.
What is the maximum message limit for 10DLC campaigns?
There is no single cap across carriers. T-Mobile enforces a daily message limit at the brand level, shared across every campaign under that brand, ranging from 1,000 messages a day for a Sole Proprietor brand up to 200,000 a day for a Standard brand with a Trust Score of 75-100. AT&T and Verizon instead throttle by messages-per-second based on the brand's vetting and campaign use case rather than a daily total, according to Twilio's own help documentation on message throughput and Trust Scores (verified 2026-09-13).
We break this specific case down separately in our SlickText review.
How much does a mass texting service cost per month?
Entry-level plans from the vendors compared above cluster in a narrow band: Textedly and SlickText start at $29/month for 500 credits, SimpleTexting shows $39/month once its $10 local number is added to the $29 credit plan, and EZ Texting's entry tier, Launch, runs $20-25/month (lower on annual billing) for 500 contacts, plus a separate $5/month telecom fee. None of these advertised prices include what the carriers charge per message on top, so budget for the base plan plus that per-message cost, not the plan price alone, current as of a 2026-09-30 check of all four vendors' pricing pages.