Group Texting Cost per Message: Why a Few Cents Adds Up Fast

A price per message is a price per copy

Text messages travel one phone at a time. A group chat that runs on ordinary texts takes each post that arrives at the group's number and sends a separate copy to every other member, and the phone network carries, and charges for, each of those copies.

That makes a per-message price honest and still easy to misread. The price is for one text reaching one phone. A post to your group is as many messages as the people it reaches, so the number that matters is not the price on the tag but that price multiplied by your group.

So ask one question before any other: is this price per post, or per person each post reaches? For group texting it is almost always per person, because the service is itself billed for every copy. The table shows how quickly the count grows with the size of the group.

Multiply it out for a month

Your group texting cost for a month is four numbers multiplied together: the price per message, the people each post reaches, the posts a day across the whole group, and the days in the month. Leave any one of them out and the estimate is wrong.

Take a shul list of 40 people that exchanges four short posts a day, counting announcements, questions and replies together. Each post reaches 39 phones. Over 30 days that is 120 posts and 4,680 messages. Most advertised prices for group chats by text sit between about one and two cents a message, and business texting tools often charge more, so the table below multiplies both ends of that range out for five ordinary groups.

Count every post, not just the organizer's. In a group where people answer each other, replies can be most of the traffic, and an estimate built on announcements alone can miss most of the bill.

Estimate your own group's monthly texts

Other ways a small price grows

The group multiplier is the big one, but it is rarely the only one. Each of these turns up on price lists published in this market, so check them against a service's own pricing page and terms before you compare.

• Long messages. One text holds about 160 English characters, or about 70 once it contains a Hebrew or Yiddish letter or an emoji. A longer post is split into parts, and each part is billed for every person it reaches. A service that advertises very long messages is advertising several parts per person.
• Photos and voice notes. Some services count a picture or a voice note as several messages, for every recipient.
• Incoming texts. Some services bill the member's text to the group's number, replies included, on top of the copies that go out.
• Fixed charges. A monthly fee for the number or for each group, a monthly minimum, a telecom or carrier fee, or a one-time registration fee can each sit outside the price per message.
• The advertised low rate. The lowest price per message often needs a large prepaid deposit, a minimum monthly volume, or an allowance that expires if the group does not use it.
• Weekly prices. A weekly price looks smaller beside a monthly one, but a month is about four and a third weeks.
• Daily caps. A limit of 100 messages a day sounds like 100 posts. For a group of 40, it is two.
• The limit itself. Past the allowance, some plans charge overage on every extra message, reload a card automatically, or bill after the month for whatever was sent. Find out which, and whether you can set a ceiling.

Questions to ask before you compare prices

Put the same questions to every service, including us. The answers turn a price on a tag into a monthly number you can actually compare.

1. Is the price per post, or per person each post reaches?
2. Are incoming texts and replies counted too?
3. How many characters make one message, and how is Hebrew or Yiddish counted?
4. Do photos or voice notes count as more than one message?
5. What is charged outside the price per message: the number, each group, a monthly minimum, carrier fees, registration?
6. Is the headline price per week, per month or per prepaid balance, and what does it take to get the advertised rate?
7. Is there a daily or monthly cap, and what happens to the group when it is reached?
8. When the group runs out, does it pause, pay overage or reload a card, and can you set a limit?
9. Do unused messages carry over, or expire at the end of the month?
10. Does anyone besides the organizer have to pay or sign up?

How Klal Chat prices a group

Transparent pricing means you can work out the bill before the bill arrives. So we sell a plan, not a price per message: each group has one monthly plan, a bundle of texts with the group's own registered number included, paid by one organizer. Nothing is added to the plan: no fee for the number, no registration fee and no overage. Members pay us nothing and never make an account, though their own phone plans still apply to the texts they send and receive.

We count the way the phone network does, and we say so up front. A post uses one text for every person in the group: the copies that go out, plus the one that comes in. A post longer than about 160 English characters, or about 70 with Hebrew or Yiddish letters, counts two texts per person, and a post much longer than that is turned away rather than charged. We send text only, so there is no photo multiplier to budget for.

Before you pay anything, the pricing page asks how many people are in your group and how busy it is, then shows the plan that fits and its monthly price. The table below is that same calculation for common groups, and nothing is added to it afterwards.

Find your group's plan · Billing questions

What happens when a group runs out

There are no overage charges. When a group has used its month's texts, members' posts pause until the plan refills, and anyone who texts in gets a note saying when. Admins keep a small reserve for something urgent.

If you would rather the group never pause, the admin can add texts in one click or switch on auto-refill. Auto-refill runs only if the admin turns it on, and it stops at a monthly limit the admin chooses. Texts you add never expire. The plan's own texts refill each month and do not carry over, so choose a plan for a normal month and add texts for an unusual one.

When a price per message really is cheaper

Sometimes it is, and a pricing guide that never said so would not be worth trusting. Multiplied out, a service charging around a cent a message can cost less than a plan for many groups, even after a monthly fee, and a small family or a quiet announcement list can come out ahead at higher rates too.

What a plan buys is a number you know in advance. The month's price does not grow with every reply, it does not depend on a deposit or a minimum volume, and nothing is charged past what you chose. Whether that is worth the difference for your group is your call, and the two tables above give you the numbers to decide.

Whichever way your numbers fall, compare a whole month for your whole group, fees and limits included, and use a busy month rather than a quiet one.

See every plan and the usage calculator · Compare GroupMe SMS alternatives

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