Cheap Bulk SMS Service Provider Comparison in the UK

There are several cheap bulk SMS providers in the UK, so choosing the right company for your text messaging service is important. You should look for pricing schedules, reliability, and good customer service should you need assistance.

Finding the best SMS service for a British business or organisation requires knowing and understanding the variety of features offered by a cheap bulk SMS provider when distributing SMS messages in bulk for marketing and communication purposes. Much research is required to comprehend all the suitable conditions for distribution using a bulk SMS gateway.

This site will cover an appreciation of critical factors such as features, price, reliability, reputation, and certification, such as ISO27001, ISO 9001, and GDPR, for quality and security.

A SMS Provider Comparison table has been developed to help you appreciate the features offered by the UK’s top cheap SMS bulk providers.

What do British SMS providers offer?

Many British companies are quickly learning the value and benefits of using a text messaging service for their organisations. Cheap, bulk SMS  services are commonly associated with marketing and communication campaigns, staff information, or special customer deals and alerts. By providing a database of clients, customers, consumers, staff or the general public, the whole process takes only a few minutes from start to finish. From then onwards, it will only take a few seconds or minutes to send a text message whether the database contains hundreds or thousands of contacts. It is a friendly, efficient and very effective means of communication. Imagine preparing a text message and having it sent and read by over 92% of end users on their mobiles within seconds of receiving it!

Within the UK, there are two sets of bulk SMS gateway providers:
1) Premium Bulk SMS Companies offering high reliability and fast SMS execution but at higher prices.
2) Cheap Bulk SMS Companies offer low prices, but reliability may be lower, and delivery may take longer.

The names of cheap bulk SMS service providers in the UK are extensive and varied. Therefore, you need to discern what reputable, reliable, and client service-orientated companies are to engage. As shown above, in the SMS Comparison table, cheap bulk SMS providers have been developed to help you compare the best features your organisation considers important to you. These cheap SMS providers include Cellcast, Notifyre, BurstSMS, SMS Broadcast, SMS Tech, ClickSend and DirectSMS.

Distribution and Features

One big advantage of sending a text message in mass through one of the UK bulk SMS providers selected from the comparison list is that no software is required to download or install from your side. These providers are web-based, meaning the only requirement is that you have access to a web browser and the Internet.

SMS distribution is the most effective two-way process for sending a message and getting feedback if required. The business or organisation needs to know that the bulk SMS provider can send a message to a large target audience and then receive responses that can be reviewed on the web or forwarded to the organisation-specific email address. This way, an organisation or a company can promptly know the type of response to the message sent out.

The overall benefit is the peace of mind that any cheap bulk SMS provider can track to determine if the text message has been received on the recipient’s mobile phone. This means a record of all incoming and outgoing SMS can be noted, and a delivery tracking analysis can be recorded for any marketing or communication campaigns. The records can be exported onto an Excel spreadsheet for easy evaluation.

You also need to investigate if the cheap bulk SMS companies listed run high-speed gateway connections to suppliers, which means they can cater for high-volume distribution within a short time frame. You can show bounces of messages sent through the API or online platform by providing detailed delivery reports. Of course, this service is at a premium and will charge more than a less prompt telecommunication carrier.

A graphical representation table has been prepared from the selection criteria presented to you on features that would help you make a logical and precise decision. As you will see, Cllcast has the best features of the five top SMS Bulk providers listed. It ranges from more than 90 out of 100, indicating an excellent feature group. The other SMS bulk providers do a reasonably good job with added value, and this should not be avoided because they are a little lower than the top bulk SMS providers for features offered.

Pricing of Services

The price variation shows that some cheap bulk SMS service providers lean towards lower volume distribution while others offer better pricing for larger distribution. Prospective clients should investigate SMS providers’ open rates to check around and see what competing bulk SMS providers have to offer in terms of charges.

To clarify this position on pricing, let’s compare different bulk service provider’s charges in the UK. Depending on the volume of text messages distributed over a month, the charges can vary for 500+, 10 000+, 100 000+, 500 000+ to 1 000 000+ SMS per month. For lower volumes, the pricing schedule differs significantly between different SMS providers. As can be seen from the table, there is a 20% difference in charges. While with a larger volume distribution, around 100,000+ are sent on an average monthly basis, the costs will also range significantly between companies of around 30%. With a large-scale distribution of one million or more text messages sent on an average monthly, there is around 30% price variation.

The table presented shows you the pricing structure of major cheap bulk SMS service providers in the UK.

A graphical representation shows a rating of 0 to 100, where 0 is non-existent, and 100 is an excellent service. Cellcast has the best SMS pricing range for disseminating text messages based on a monthly period.  This is followed by Notifyre, which has a very good comparable costing structure. While with the other two cheap bulk providers, the range of messages distributed per month, both SMS Tech and Direct SMS, are not comparable in prices compared to the other bulk SMS providers outlined.

Reliability

 

Of course, there is a need for reliability and reputation of cheap SMS companies to send client’s bulk texts to customers, clients, staff or any groups that need to be communicated. One of the criteria for selecting an appropriate provider is that you must be assured that the scheduled SMS is transmitted at set times. This timing scheduling is great for reminders for appointments or alerts, or important date notifications to customers, clients, or staff.  Alternatively, by scheduling a text message in advance, the client can introduce or promote a marketing or communication campaign.

Numerous SMS service providers discussed have an uptime guarantee of 99% to 99.9% reliability of receiving the SMS on time as required. In very few cases, the SMS provider has 100% uptime with a Service Level Guarantee (SLA) as part of their assurance.

Again, using the overall selection criteria considered imperative from a reliability perspective, the graphical table representation shown below makes it pleasing to note that all these cheap bulk SMS service providers offer a very reliable service to their clients. They are regarded as nearly excellent, ranging from 98 to 100, which means they meet clients’, customers’, and staff’ expectations of providing mass text information reliably and efficiently.

Customer Service and Reputation

It is one thing to offer a range of features and relatively cheap prices; it is another to know that most cheap SMS bulk providers have a nearby customer support centre available in the UK to answer queries or assist with distributing text messages. This factor has led to large, reputable British and multinational companies being clients of bulk SMS British providers. A list of some of the clients can be viewed on the providers’ websites.

You should ensure that cheap SMS companies are anti-SPAM and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) compliant. You should also ask if their service can clean an SMS contact list when it is imported and reformat it when it is provided in different styles. Some have an auto-opt-out for clients with free access to their shared virtual reply numbers pool.

Many Bulk SMS companies provide a promotional offer so that possible clients can be provided with a free trial to review their effectiveness as well as the efficiency of the service. Such free trials vary from 5 free SMS to 60 free SMS.

Using the graphical table representation, SMS Tech and Cellcast stand out in reputation and customer service, ranging from 93 to 95 out of 100. This is excellent from a client’s point of view. However, the other providers follow relatively closely.

About Bulk SMS UK Comparison Table

The authors understand just how hard it is to complete a full comparison of cheap SMS Bulk service providers in the UK. With so many SMS companies in the UK, pricing schedules and delivery networks, it can take a long time to find the right provider. Having worked with some of the leading SMS UK providers in the past, the key information that British businesses needed was collected from individual British SMS provider’s websites and inserted into the SMS Comparison Table.

A Bulk SMS Provider UK Comparison Table has been developed and is readily available for readers. The authors, having worked with some of the leading cheap bulk SMS service providers in the past, have the expertise to evaluate the key components using a number of key selection criteria (as stated above) to ensure a fair, unbiased, and equitable overview of the services offered by several of these leading providers.

It should be stressed that the SMS Comparison Table and the site have been manually formulated and analysed based on SMS providers’ websites. SMS providers may change their prices and features without notice, so it is recommended that readers check prices and features before engaging any cheap mass SMS provider. If you have any information on this comparison table that appears inaccurate or needs to be updated, please use the ‘Contact Us’ section to notify the site’s owners. They aim to make the change as soon as possible.

The Comparison Table is free to assist you; however, a commission may be sought from the provider’s site if you click through their website and engage their services. There are no forms of advertising on this site, and the authors have included price and other key features as the major selection elements that have led to the recommendations made on the site.

 

This page was last updated on 5 June 2024.

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