Attentive Pricing: What You Actually Pay

Attentive does not publish prices. Its pricing page, fetched 4 October 2026, lists three packages and four AI add-ons with no dollar figure, no per-message rate and nothing on contract length. What you pay is set on a sales call, so the useful work is knowing how SMS billing is built and what to ask.

What does Attentive's own pricing page actually tell you?

Attentive's pricing page carries one sentence that explains the whole model: "Attentive's pricing is tailored to your business needs based on your message volume, subscriber list size, number of channels, and AI products selected" (vendor pricing page, 4 October 2026). Four variables, no numbers. The page then presents three packages. "SMS, email, RCS, & push" is pitched as getting the most from every channel working together. "Text & email" is pitched on driving more revenue with SMS and email. "Text" covers SMS, MMS and RCS, and is the only package that states a billing basis: "Pay per message and subscriber count". Four AI add-ons sit alongside, named AI Pro, AI Grow, AI Journeys and AI Essentials, again without prices. The calls to action are "Get a demo" and "Take a tour".

What the page does not say matters as much. There is no "starts at" figure, no per-message rate, no carrier-fee language, and no language about contract length or a minimum commitment (vendor pricing page, 4 October 2026). The compliance line reads "Built-in TCPA and compliance tools", and Attentive's separate compliance page is headed "Built to protect your program" and notes that "Many of the issues driving today's TCPA litigation are preventable" (vendor compliance page, 4 October 2026). Neither page mentions 10DLC, so Attentive's position on number registration is not something you can read before the call.

That means every third-party page quoting an Attentive price is quoting a customer's contract, a reseller's estimate, or a guess. None of it is from attentive.com. Treat those figures as anecdotes about one deal rather than a price list, and go into the conversation with a model of your own.

How is SMS pricing built: per-message rates, carrier fees and 10DLC?

Every US SMS platform bill has the same three layers, whether or not the vendor itemises them. The first is the platform fee: a flat monthly charge for the software, the segmentation and the support. The second is the per-message rate: what the platform charges you for each message segment it sends. The third is the carrier fee: the surcharge the US mobile carriers add per message, which the platform either passes through on its own line or folds into its rate.

Postscript is the cleanest public example because it publishes all three. Its Starter plan is $0 a month with a $49 monthly minimum spend at $0.009 per SMS and $0.045 per MMS plus carrier fees; Growth is $100 a month at $0.008 per SMS and $0.03 per MMS; Professional is $500 a month at $0.007 per SMS and $0.024 per MMS (vendor pricing page, 4 October 2026). The carrier fees are stated separately as US averages: $0.00330 per SMS, $0.00799 per MMS, $0.0047 per text RCS and $0.0087 per media RCS, for the US 50 states and Canada only, and Postscript says they "pass through at cost on their own line" (vendor pricing page, 4 October 2026). Klaviyo takes the other approach and "bundles carrier fees into your plan rate" (Klaviyo help centre, fetched 4 October 2026).

Two more mechanics drive the bill. A message is billed per segment rather than per text: a standard SMS segment is 160 characters in the GSM character set, and an emoji or a special character drops the segment to 70, so a 200-character message with one emoji is three segments. MMS carries an image and bills at a higher flat rate, which is why MMS rates are three to five times SMS rates on Postscript's sheet. And the number you send from changes the cost. Postscript's compliance guide notes that verification "will vary depending on if your brand is using a 10 digit long code (10DLC), Toll Free Number (TFN) or Dedicated Short Code (DSC)" (Postscript compliance guide, 4 October 2026). 10DLC is a standard ten-digit number registered to your brand and campaign with the carriers; registration carries fees and the carrier surcharge differs by number type. The fact base for this post has no published 10DLC registration figure from either vendor, so ask for it itemised.

How do you model true cost per message against Postscript's published tiers?

The modelling is simple arithmetic once you have the three layers. All-in cost per SMS segment is the per-message rate plus the carrier fee, and the platform fee is spread across the month's volume. Using Postscript's published figures: Starter is $0.009 plus $0.00330, or $0.0123 per SMS segment; Growth is $0.008 plus $0.00330, or $0.0113; Professional is $0.007 plus $0.00330, or $0.0103 (our arithmetic on vendor pricing page figures, 4 October 2026). For MMS the same sums give $0.05299, $0.03799 and $0.03199.

Now add the platform fee. At 50,000 SMS segments a month, Starter costs $615 with no platform fee, Growth costs $100 plus $565, or $665, and Professional costs $500 plus $515, or $1,015. Starter wins. The crossover is where the lower rate repays the fee: Growth saves $0.001 per segment over Starter, so its $100 fee pays back at 100,000 segments a month; Professional saves a further $0.001 over Growth, so its extra $400 pays back at 400,000 segments. Below roughly 100,000 SMS segments a month Starter is the cheapest published Postscript plan on SMS alone; between 100,000 and 400,000 Growth is; above 400,000 Professional is. The MMS rates fall faster between tiers than the SMS rates, so a brand sending mostly MMS reaches those crossovers sooner; rerun the sum with your own mix.

At the small end the minimum spend bites. On Starter, $49 buys roughly 4,000 SMS segments at $0.0123 all-in, so a brand sending fewer than that pays $49 regardless. Postscript's pricing page says there are "No prepaid balances, expiring credits, overages, or auto-upgrades" and offers a 30-day free trial on all plans (vendor pricing page, 4 October 2026), which makes it the easiest tier set to model. Whether carrier fees count toward the $49 minimum is not stated; ask.

This is the sheet to take into the Attentive call. The question is not "how much is Attentive" but "what rate, what platform fee and what carrier treatment would make Attentive land at or under $0.0123, $0.0113 or $0.0103 all-in per segment at my volume". Our Attentive vs Postscript comparison takes the feature side of that decision.

Where does Klaviyo's per-message model fit in the comparison?

Klaviyo matters here because many DTC brands already run email on it, and adding SMS to the same account is the obvious alternative to a second vendor. Its SMS is a separate Mobile Messaging subscription, and from 13 July 2026 Klaviyo moved that pricing "from credits to per-message, dollar-based rates" (Klaviyo help centre, fetched 4 October 2026). The stated formula is "Rate x Recipients x Message segments = Total cost", and Klaviyo "bundles carrier fees into your plan rate". The per-country rates are shown in-product only; the fact base for this post has no verified Klaviyo US per-segment rate, so we do not quote one.

That structure changes how you compare. A Klaviyo rate is all-in, so it should be set against Postscript's rate plus carrier fee, not against the bare $0.009. If Klaviyo shows you a US SMS rate in your account, the comparison is that number against $0.0123, $0.0113 or $0.0103 depending on which Postscript tier your volume would land on, plus any Klaviyo platform fee for the Mobile Messaging subscription, which again is set in-product. The same logic applies to Attentive: ask whether the quoted rate includes carrier fees, because a rate that excludes them is not comparable to one that includes them.

The reason to run this exercise with the retention email programmes team in the room is that the email and SMS calendars compete for the same attention and the same subscribers, and a per-message SMS bill makes every send a line item in a way email is not. Our email vs SMS for DTC post sets out when a message belongs on each channel.

What should you ask Attentive on the sales call?

Because nothing is published, the call is the price list, so get it in writing in these terms.

First, the rate card. Ask for the per-segment price for SMS, MMS and RCS separately, and whether each figure includes carrier fees or whether carrier fees are a separate pass-through line. Attentive's pricing page has no carrier-fee language at all, so this is the first gap to close.

Second, the volume and subscriber tiers. The page says pricing is based on "message volume, subscriber list size, number of channels, and AI products selected". Ask what the tier boundaries are on each, what happens when you cross one mid-term, and whether an unused volume commitment rolls over or expires.

Third, the platform fee and the term. Ask whether there is a fixed monthly platform fee on top of message charges, whether the contract is monthly or annual, what the minimum commitment is, and what the exit terms are. The pricing page is silent on all four.

Fourth, the AI add-ons. AI Pro, AI Grow, AI Journeys and AI Essentials are listed without prices. Ask what each costs, whether it is a flat fee or a per-message uplift, and whether any of them is required for the features shown in the demo.

Fifth, compliance and numbers. The page promises "Built-in TCPA and compliance tools". Ask who registers your 10DLC campaign or short code, who pays the registration and recurring number fees, and whether a dedicated short code is included or quoted separately. Our SMS list growth post covers the consent capture that makes the compliance tooling worth having.

Sixth, the comparison. Hand over your Postscript model and ask Attentive to fill in the same three layers at your volume. A vendor confident in its price will do it.

Should you take the Attentive quote or buy a published tier?

The honest answer is that it depends on size, and the published alternatives tell you where the line sits. A brand sending under 100,000 SMS segments a month has a published all-in price of $0.0123 per segment from Postscript Starter with no platform fee, a $49 minimum, and a 30-day free trial to test it (vendor pricing page, 4 October 2026). At that volume the Attentive call has to beat a known number, and the demo is the only way to find out whether it does. Attentive's packaging, with RCS and push alongside SMS and email and four AI tiers, reads as built for a brand running several channels from one contract, which is a different buyer from the one choosing a first SMS tool.

Where Attentive wins on the published record: its pricing page packages SMS, MMS, RCS, email and push together, it names four AI tiers, and its compliance positioning is explicit on TCPA. Where it loses: nothing on its site gives you a price or a rate, and its pages say nothing about 10DLC or carrier fees. Postscript wins on transparency, with every layer published and a 30-day trial; whether its package covers your email needs is not something its pricing page addresses. Klaviyo wins when email is already there and the carrier-fee bundling simplifies the bill, and loses on public verifiability, since its SMS rates are in-product only.

Across the SMS programmes we run, the all-in cost per SMS segment and the revenue per message on the named platform are the figures we put next to any quote before the client signs. On Darc Sport, which runs SMS on Attentive, revenue per campaign message sent stood at $7.89. Our SMS programme team builds that model from your own send volume and segment mix before a vendor is chosen, so the sales call starts from your number rather than theirs.

SMS cost layers: what is published and what is not (vendor pricing pages, 4 October 2026)