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The first question we usually get in every pricing conversation is “what it costs per message.” It’s a reasonable question and an interesting unit of measurement, because it prices the input rather than the result.
A message that costs a fraction of a cent and gets ignored is more expensive than one that costs several cents and gets a customer to complete a payment. The unit that matters is cost per outcome, and almost nobody calculates it before signing anything.
Here’s how to work it out, including the parts of the pricing model that are easy to miss.
What you are paying for today, in full
Before comparing anything, get an honest read on your current program. Most teams underestimate it, because the invoice only shows part of the cost.
The visible costs include:
- Per-message fees, charged per segment rather than per message, so a longer message costs more than one line
- A surcharge when the message carries an image
- Any number or short-code rental
- Platform fees for the tool that sends it
The invisible costs, which usually dwarf the visible ones:
- Support contacts asking whether a message was really from you
- Time-sensitive messages that failed because the customer hesitated
- Payment and delivery notices that went unanswered and turned into calls or write-offs
- The share of your list that has quietly stopped reading anything from an unfamiliar number
None of those appear as a line item labeled “messaging.” They appear as a CX headcount, as churn, and as unrecovered revenue.
Three pricing structures, and what each one rewards
RCS for Business Messaging is sold in a few different ways. Understanding which one you are buying matters more than the headline rate, because each one creates a different incentive.
Per message. You pay for every message sent. It’s simple, predictable, and it quietly punishes the thing you most want. If a customer replies with two questions and you answer both, that conversation costs you five messages instead of one. Under a per-message pricing plan, engagement is a cost center. Teams respond by keeping messages one-way as a cost saving measure, which is how you end up with a channel that cannot hold a conversation.
Per active consumer. You pay for each unique person who exchanged messages with you in a month, and the messages within that relationship are not metered individually. So essentially, a customer who asks four questions and completes a purchase costs the same amount as one who taps once. Two-way conversation becomes free to attempt.
Platform fee plus messaging volume, with overages. A monthly fee covers a set allowance (1,000 messages, 10,000 messages, etc.,) and you pay a per-message rate beyond it. Watch for how conversations are counted inside the allowance, which is where the real differences hide.
Our own model uses the second and third of these, depending on what you want to accomplish and how big your messaging list is. Our platform includes a monthly message allowance with (small) overage rates beyond it. Our current figures live on the pricing page, which is the number to trust rather than anything quoted in this article that’ll age.
One detail worth knowing because it changes the arithmetic on support and service conversations: after a handful of messages with the same customer inside a day, additional messages in that window stop counting against the allowance. We designed it this way so long conversations are a desired outcome, not a tax on your bottom line.
The carrier setup fee, explained rather than buried
There is a one-time fee per channel, charged when the channel is created, and it is worth being direct about what it is.
It isn’t a platform margin item, it’s a mobile carrier-required verification fee that they require to create your account. We can set up everything on our end during your free trial period, but we’ll need to work with the carriers and deliver the fee in order for us to take what we’ve created and send it out to the masses. That verification is what puts your name and logo at the top of the customer's thread and prevents anyone else from ever registering as you.
In other words, it’s the line item that buys the customers’ trust. If you’re comparing quotes and one has no equivalent fee, a useful question is whether that offer includes verified branded sending at all, or it’s just an unbranded number with extra formatting.
Build the comparison in five lines
Take one message type you send today, at a volume you actually run, and fill in both columns.
- Total program cost per thousand sends. Include the invisible costs above. Be generous with your own current program so the comparison holds up under scrutiny.
- Completion rate on whatever the message exists to achieve: a payment, a booking, a purchase, a resolved question. Not opens, not clicks.
- Value per completion. Revenue, recovered MRR, or the cost of the phone call you avoided.
- Cost per completion. Line 1 divided by completions per thousand. This is the number that should drive the decision.
- Support contacts generated per thousand sends, calculated at your own per-contact figure.
Most teams find that the interactive version has a higher cost per send and a lower cost per completion.
Where the money usually is
If you want the shortest path to a defensible number, run this on the message types where a failure is most expensive:
- Failed payment recovery, where a completion is recovered revenue and the current version is routinely mistaken for fraud
- Appointment confirmations, where a completion is a filled slot with a known dollar value
- Cart and checkout recovery, where the loss is already itemized in your dashboard
- Support deflection, where a completion is a phone call that did not happen, at your own cost per call
These are also the message types you already send, which means the comparison requires no new campaign, only a different destination for an existing trigger.
What to ask any vendor
Regardless of who you end up buying from, these questions separate a real quote from a headline rate:
- Is verified branded sending included, or is it an add-on?
- What is the one-time verification cost per channel, and what does it cover?
- Do you cover those costs for me?
- How are two-way conversations billed? Does a customer replying cost me more?
- What happens when a device cannot receive the interactive version? Is fallback automatic and included, or billed separately?
- Is there an annual commitment, or can I run one use case for a month and stop?
- What is the overage rate, and how is the allowance counted?
- What does the setup timeline look like before I can send anything?
See it on the device it lands on
Don't take our word for it. Tap through it.
The interactive guides walk you through a branded messaging experience exactly as your customer would see it, on the platform they are holding:
Current plans, allowances, and overage rates are on the pricing page, with self-serve checkout on every tier below Enterprise. Want help building the cost-per-outcome model for one of your message types? Book a demo and we will do it with your actual numbers.