Attentive Pricing (2026): SMS Costs, Plans and Fees Explained

Attentive’s pricing page publishes no dollar price: it says pricing is “tailored to your business needs based on your message volume, subscriber list size, number of channels, and AI products selected.” Its help center adds the rest of the bill: a monthly base fee, per-segment SMS and MMS rates set in each contract, and carrier delivery fees on top.

Relvino competes with Attentive, so read this as informed but interested. Every statement about Attentive below comes from Attentive’s own site and help center as read on 9 November 2026; third-party figures are named, linked and labelled as reports.

What Attentive’s pricing page says

The page lists four things the price is based on: “The number of messages you send”, “The size of your subscriber list”, “The number of channels you use”, and “The premium AI tools you need”. Its three channel packages, “Text” (whose card also lists “Pay per message and subscriber count”), “Text & email” and “SMS, email, RCS, & push”, each carry the line “Pricing based on list size and messages sent”, plus an all-channel package marked “Custom pricing” and “Pricing based on volume and needs”.

The AI products are priced on their own: AI Essentials is “Included with all plans”, AI Pro and AI Grow are each a “Flat monthly fee”, and AI Journeys is “Pay per click”. The page’s FAQ says “Attentive offers usage-based pricing, so you only pay for what you actually use” with “no credit system required”, that “we offer discounts when you bundle multiple channels or premium AI products together to maximize value”, and, on trials, “Yes, we offer free trials.” The calls to action are “Get a demo” and “Get started”.

What an Attentive bill is made of

Attentive’s help center article “FAQs: Messaging and billing” and its carrier delivery fees page describe the lines a customer is actually billed for.

• Base fee: “The base fee is a standard monthly charge for our service.”
• Message rates: SMS and MMS are billed per message segment at the rates in “the Order Details section of your contract”, and replies count too: “We bill for each message that you send subscribers and each subscriber response.”
• Carrier delivery fees: charged “In addition to the fees for SMS and MMS Message Segments set forth in the Attentive Order Form,” for each segment sent or received, invoiced by Attentive and “subject to change at any time.”
• Minimum Commits: “Attentive offers rate discounts in exchange for committed terms with recurring minimum spend commitments”. If usage falls short at the end of a commit period, the customer is invoiced for “the remaining amount of the Minimum Commit”, and shortcode fees, the base fee and carrier delivery fees all count toward it.
• Other charges: the Billable Spend report article in its help center also names “Shortcode fee charges”, “Email charges”, “List Management charges” and “Professional Service charges”.

Apart from carrier delivery fees and email, none of these lines has a published figure; each is set in the contract. For email, the fee schedule Attentive’s help center links to starts at $150 a month for up to 10,000 contacts.

What an SMS message costs: segments, carrier fees, SMS vs MMS

A marketing text is billed in segments, and on Attentive each segment carries two charges: the contract’s per-segment rate and a carrier delivery fee, which Attentive’s help center defines as “standard fees charged by the carriers based on the number of message segments transmitted.”

• Segment length: Attentive’s legal page says messages “exceeding 160 characters, or 70 characters for a message containing Unicode characters such as emojis or accented characters, will be sent as multiple message segments.” The brand name, short link and opt-out language all count.
• SMS vs MMS: an MMS (a message with an image, GIF or video) carries higher carrier fees. On Attentive’s US tables, current as of Oct 1, 2026, the carrier fee for each segment sent runs from $0.0035 to $0.0050 for SMS and from $0.0070 to $0.010 for MMS, depending on the carrier.
• Replies: received segments are billed too; a received US SMS segment carries $0.0025 to $0.0035, with Verizon listed as N/A.
• Outside the US: Canada toll-free segments carry their own carrier fees; in the UK and 16 other listed countries, carrier fees “are currently included in the messaging rates”.

So the cost of one text is the contract rate plus the carrier fee, multiplied by its segments. A 200-character message with one emoji is three segments, not one.

What third parties report Attentive costs

Because the contract holds the numbers, outside figures are reports of what some buyers paid, not Attentive’s price. Vendr’s Attentive buyer guide, which draws on Vendr’s own dataset, says the “Median buyer pays” $40,000 per year, in a range from $1,800 to $72,000, and writes that “Most contracts include a monthly or annual minimum commitment”. Taylor Sicard’s guide, whose author discloses that Postscript is an advisory client and that he holds equity in it, describes an Attentive agreement as “typically an annual platform commitment invoiced monthly, with message and carrier costs bundled into the negotiated number.”

The sources disagree on carrier fees: Attentive’s own legal page charges them in addition to the Order Form message rates, not inside them. Neither report can say what a given brand will be quoted.

Questions to take into the Attentive demo

• The per-segment rates for SMS, MMS and RCS in the Order Form, and whether replies are charged at the same rate.
• The monthly base fee, and whether a shortcode fee applies.
• Whether a Minimum Commit is proposed, its period, and the rate without one.
• How the “size of your subscriber list” component is priced, and whether it steps up as the list grows.
• The flat monthly fee for AI Pro and AI Grow, and what counts as a click for AI Journeys.

Attentive pricing at a glance

Quoted phrases in the Attentive cells are from its pricing page, help center and legal pages; the Relvino cells are from Relvino’s own pages.

• Published prices · Attentive: None on its pricing page; “Custom pricing” and “Get a demo” · Relvino: Published on the pricing page
• What sets the bill · Attentive: “message volume, subscriber list size, number of channels, and AI products selected” · Relvino: One monthly plan by the size of the consented list
• Message charges · Attentive: Per SMS and MMS segment, sent and received, plus carrier delivery fees · Relvino: Emails and pop-ups included up to the plan allowance; SMS billed at usage on the same invoice
• Credits · Attentive: “no credit system required” · Relvino: Plan plus usage on the same invoice
• AI · Attentive: AI Essentials included; AI Pro and AI Grow a flat monthly fee; AI Journeys pay per click · Relvino: The agent is the product, not an add-on
• Trial · Attentive: “Yes, we offer free trials.” · Relvino: A 14-day pilot beside the current tool

Why the cheapest rate is not the cheapest program

Three of Attentive’s four pricing inputs rise with the size of the program and none is tied to revenue, and every segment adds a carrier fee. The cost that matters is the texts that should not have been sent, each of which spends money and some of the consent that makes an SMS list valuable, so a platform that sends fewer, better texts to the same list is cheaper at any rate. The field of alternatives is in Attentive competitors, the head-to-head with Klaviyo is in Attentive vs Klaviyo, the two-vendor SMS comparison is in Postscript vs Attentive, and the guide to leaving a per-message vendor is in Postscript alternative.

What Relvino does with a consented list

Relvino decides, per consented shopper, whether a message is warranted at all and, if so, the offer, channel and moment, across email, SMS and pop-ups, in ~80ms and inside guardrails the brand sets once. TOMS reaches its email and SMS subscribers through Attentive; without sending a single email or text, Relvino’s agents identified 16% margin recovery on cart abandonment flows, where most discount spend was going to shoppers who were already buying. Relvino is one monthly plan sized by the consented list (see the pricing page); what switching from Attentive costs is answered in the FAQ below. The technical migration takes 30 minutes, the proof is a 14-day pilot, and the full comparison is Attentive vs Relvino.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Attentive cost?

Attentive’s pricing page publishes no price. The quote is based on message volume, subscriber list size, number of channels and AI products, and the bill adds a monthly base fee, per-segment SMS and MMS rates set in the contract, and carrier delivery fees. As a third-party report, not Attentive’s figure, Vendr’s buyer guide puts the median buyer at $40,000 per year.

How much does Attentive cost per month?

Attentive publishes no monthly price for its SMS program; its pricing page shows none. The fixed monthly part is the base fee, which Attentive’s help center calls “a standard monthly charge for our service.” On top of it come message segments, carrier delivery fees, any AI products (AI Pro and AI Grow are a flat monthly fee, AI Journeys is pay per click) and, under a Minimum Commit, any shortfall at the end of the commit period.

How much does an SMS message cost?

A text is billed per segment of 160 characters (70 with emojis or accented letters): the platform’s per-segment rate plus a carrier delivery fee. On Attentive’s US tables, current as of Oct 1, 2026, the carrier fee per segment sent is $0.0035 to $0.0050 for SMS and $0.0070 to $0.010 for MMS, on top of a contract rate its pricing page does not publish.

What are some popular SMS providers?

SMS providers that ecommerce brands commonly evaluate include Attentive, Postscript, Klaviyo SMS, Emotive, Sendlane and Yotpo SMS. The field is covered vendor by vendor in Attentive competitors, Postscript and Attentive are compared head to head in Postscript vs Attentive, and Attentive is set against Klaviyo in Klaviyo vs Attentive.

What does switching from Attentive cost?

Brands that switch pay 90 to 95% of their old Klaviyo or Attentive bill. Switching means connecting email and SMS, installing the Shopify app, and sharing brand assets and any CRM data; Relvino reads the brand’s voice from its website, and the brand sets its guardrails. The consented list is the brand’s and comes with it. Any remaining term or Minimum Commit on the existing Attentive contract is governed by that contract.

Who are attentive competitors?

Its direct rivals are other SMS and email platforms, covered vendor by vendor in Attentive competitors. The other kind of alternative is an agent that decides per consented shopper whether a text is warranted, which is what Relvino does.

How long does it take to migrate an SMS program from Attentive to Relvino?

30 minutes for the technical cutover: connect the Shopify store, point the sending domain, connect SMS, and shopper data ingests automatically. The consented list is the brand’s and comes with it. No journeys are rebuilt, because there are none on the other side; guardrails such as quiet hours, consent and frequency are set once and the agent decides per shopper inside them. Revenue is proven in a 14-day pilot beside the current tool.