SMS isn't the marketing channel for the future— it's the channel that online brands need now. Boasting an almost 100 percent open rate and impressive engagement rates, this is a sign you need to get your SMS marketing game off the ground and start texting your customers right away.

SMS is an instinctively two-way conversational channel. Some SMS marketing platforms are quick to grasp this by having a team of real people who take over and respond to texts in real-time.

You'll see how a humanized, conversational approach is your key differentiator this year as customers seek out engaged, in-store experiences when they shop online.

In this article, we'll review an SMS marketing service well known for its humanized approach to recovering abandoned shopping carts— LiveRecover and 5 other SMS platforms in 2021, what their customers are saying, pricing models, and the boxes you should tick for any prospective SMS tool.

Have you heard about LiveRecover?

LiveRecover is a conversational text messaging platform available for Shopify and WooCommerce stores.

While they focus only on cart abandonment and sending text messages to shoppers within the US and Canada, LiveRecover is powered by real people to contact, engage and convert abandoned carts into sales for you.

This human approach to texting is a great way to speak directly to your customers and enhance the customer experience right from the start.

LiveRecover Pricing Plans

• Growth: $49 per month + 10% of SMS revenue
• Pro: $99 per month + 5% of SMS generated revenue
• Enterprise custom: Requires you to contact their sales team and annual commitment

What Their Customers are Saying

Using a conversational approach right off the bat can take your SMS marketing program from invasive to personal really quick.

And it's also crucial for you to consider the next natural step for your business when choosing an SMS marketing platform that can fully support your business goals in 2021 and beyond.

If you're planning to expand internationally and sell without borders, providing the same level of support to your network of shoppers outside of the US and Canada should be a priority.

Also from what we understand, LiveRecover uses shared phone numbers to text shoppers— what this means is your subscribers may get texts from different brands coming from the same number.

If you're going for personalized and effective this year for your SMS program, you might want to text your customers using dedicated 10DLC numbers.

Choosing wisely now would save you the headache of migrating to a different SMS platform later on. And using two different SMS marketing apps for your store might incur additional costs and compromise your control over your customer's entire journey.

So let's take a look at 5 SMS marketing alternatives to LiveRecover.

5 Best LiveRecover Alternatives for SMS Marketing

1. Cartloop

Like LiveRecover, Cartloop offers the humanized approach for online brands that want to truly engage with shoppers in real-time, with real people behind each conversation.

Cartloop is a fully managed SMS service for Shopify and Shopify Plus stores. So you'll feel as if you have an extension of your in-house team. 💬

We're constantly adding more countries to our list, but we now support sending text messages to subscribers in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

Here's how we take our conversational approach to SMS a step further.

How Cartloop Talks Directly to Shoppers✨

Cartloop's 24/7 Live Experts are a fun bunch to talk to. When an abandoned shopper responds to a text message, Live Experts will take over the conversation to recover up to 5x more abandoned carts— across different timezones.

We don't stop at cart recovery. Cartloop's Shopify SMS marketing service combines sales and support under one communication. This includes:

• Assistance with failed transaction
• Personalized product recommendations
• Product-related information
• Shipping and delivery information
• Up-sells and cross-sells

Want to let build stronger relationships with your customers this year and drive more revenue at the same time? Check this out.

Cartloop's conversational text messaging features allow you to:

• Grow a compliant list of SMS subscribers with popups
• Engage with subscribers via 2-way conversational campaigns
• Provided with local and dedicated 10DLC numbers
• Keep all customer interactions under one single conversation with our Gorgias integration
• Enjoy a fully-managed conversational SMS marketing platform

Read more about how Cartloop's latest integration with Gorgias can enable seamless conversations between your customer and an internal Customer Support team within a single point of interaction.

What differentiates us from LiveRecover?

We specialize in helping our merchants build stronger relationships with their customers by connecting with them in a more delightful, personal way— over text. The Cartloop SMS conversation allows shoppers to interact with their favourite brands and get instant assistance.

Get 2x higher conversion rates, build customer rapport, and never miss an opportunity with our two-way campaigns.

Our newest popup feature completes the picture, you can grow a compliant SMS subscriber list and nurture website visitors into returning, happy customers without even compromising email capture. Pretty nifty!

Cartloop Pricing Plans

Cartloop's pricing model is pretty straightforward.

• Starter: $0 per month + 15% of Cartloop revenue
• Growth: $29 per month + 10% of Cartloop revenue
• Pro: $299 per month + 3% of Cartloop revenue

We charge our clients based on the revenue you generate using their SMS marketing— a must-have for brands that want to drive more revenue with no risk.

Customer Reviews

Cartloop are amazing, we actually weren't sure of how good they were until we stopped services, seen a massive drop straight away, so we knew we needed to get things set up again. Andrei and the team are an amazing support, nothing is too much work for them. Getting around 20x ROAs per campaign they send out! - The Essence Vault

I was incredibly dubious about using Cartloop, especially for a brand we're so cautious about keeping the right tone of voice for—we're in a quite sensitive space that requires an enormous amount of empathy. Outsourcing support on a channel as intimate as SMS was a risk. I cannot tell you just how impressed I've been!

Alexandra has been utterly fantastic at understanding our brands' mission and ensuring that Cartloop's support agents also understand what our brand is about and proactively monitoring conversations on our behalf. What's been even greater is the feedback we're seeing from customers. (......) — Empowered by Ashley

3-Step Setup for your Shopify Store

One of the perks of a fully managed SMS app for your Shopify store? A plug-and-play setup process. Here's how easy it is:

1. Search for Cartloop on the Shopify App Store and add it to your store with a 1-click installation.
2. Optimize your checkout to stay compliant
3. We'll take over from here to ensure your hit better results, consistently

At step 3, Cartloop's Live Experts will also immediately take over once an event triggers the cart abandonment SMS flow. It's a support and sales channel all in one.

For campaigns and popups that need continuous optimization, a dedicated Success Manager is always available to help you drive bigger, better results—consistenly. You can request a free demo here.

For a great example of how conversational SMS is a great complement to your existing email marketing channel, read how a Shopify Plus Agency generated $37k in 2 days for their client with Cartloop's conversational approach.

2. Postscript

Postscript is currently used by thousands of growing Shopify and Shopify plus stores to manage their SMS marketing— they support both SMS and MMS.

Postscript is an option for brands and stores within the Shopify ecosystem looking for mass-scale SMS marketing for their shoppers. How they differ from LiveRecover is that they're optimized to send in the US and Canada, but have also branced out to cover the UK and Australia.

While it is a comprehensive SMS marketing service, Postscript offers a do-it-yourself service model. This means learning how to wield it may take some extra time to navigate and a hands-on approach with your team.

Postscript Pricing Plans

The Postscript pricing model runs on a credit system to cater to brands that are looking for more flexibility.

1. Cost Per Message is calculated based on how many messages you'd like to send per month
2. The Total Cost per month is calculated based on the cost per message.
3. The minimum starts at 2.5 messages per month with $0.01 cost per message.

While there is some calculation required, they have a calculator here for this.

Customer Reviews

If you're looking for an SMS marketing platform that will allow you to get on the ball with SMS and MMS marketing with a hands-on approach, Postscript's SMS solutions might interest you and to make an informed decision this 2021, you can check out how Postscript compares to other SMS solutions.

3. Emotive

Emotive is another good option as a DIY SMS marketing tool. It's more suited to enterprise-level brands that want to be hands-on with their SMS marketing channel.

Unlike Cartloop, Emotive offers a somewhat different approach to SMS marketing. Their Emotive automation tool works to automate your responses using branch logic.

For anyone who's already familiar with email marketing automation, their automation interface will be a familiar sight to how you set up your responses based on the action a subscriber takes.

Emotive Pricing Plans

While the Emotive website requires you to book a demo to get a quote, they offer two types of plans.

• Starter: Free-trial
• Custom Pricing

Customer Reviews

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4. Attentive

Attentive has recently expanded to include both text and email marketing for Shopify, Shopify Plus brands, and other eCommerce platforms.

It is also another self-service SMS platform for brands who want to focus on large-scale marketing messaging. They don't offer full international coverage and focus on sending messages to shoppers located in the US and Canada.

Attentive Pricing Plans

Based on their website, Attentive offers only custom plans. While a free trial is not available, you can book a demo to get a quote based on the needs of your business.

Customer Reviews

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5. SMSBump

SMSBump offers an SMS solution for Shopify and Shopify Plus brands and stores that want to focus on bulk SMS with global coverage and autopilot their SMS program with automation.

Like Postscript, their SMS platform is a do-it-yourself service. You'll have to set up the automation yourself in order to capture subscribers and send them messages through every stage of their customer journey.

If you're looking for an SMS marketing platform that will allow you to test the waters with SMS and MMS marketing with global coverage, SMSBump's reasonable pricing might interest you.

You can check out this comparison article to see how SMSBump compares to other alternatives this 2021.

SMSBump Pricing Plans

• Free: $0 per month/ $0.0149 per SMS*
• Growth: $19 per month/ $0.0149 per SMS*
• Prime: $59 per month/ $0.0142 per SMS*
• Powerhouse: $199 per month/ $0.0130 per SMS*
• Enterprise: Custom Pricing

*All message pricing listed are for within the US only

What SMSBump Customers are Saying

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Wrap Up: Choosing The Best Solution for Your SMS Program

With many SMS marketing platforms out there equipped with advanced features, not all are created equal.

As SMS marketing continues to evolve as a sales and marketing channel, here's where it becomes more complicated.  You'll want to balance price and features with usability, integrations and data availability.

Here are 8 guiding questions to help you make an informed decision and get your SMS marketing program off the ground:

1. Is there an easy way to collect customer information such as mobile numbers and have this automatically sync with my SMS platform, such as popups that can collect emails as well?
2. Can I easily create my own SMS campaigns to constantly engage with my customers across their entire customer journey?
3. Can I easily build segments of my SMS subscribers to personalize my messaging?
4. Can I keep all my customer conversations within a single point of communication so my customers can reach me any time?
5. Can I glean qualitative insights from my customers to back up by qualitative data and know what makes them tick?
6. Does this SMS marketing platform integrate with the tools I'm using, such as my eCommerce platform?
7. How can this SMS marketing platform support my business and revenue goals for 2021, can I reach an international audience?
8. Last but not least, can I text my customers like they're real people and build a stronger relationship with my shoppers?

In short, choose a platform that offers you the most flexibility for a start, is fully managed, allows you to segment and personalize your messages, and helps you meet your growth and ROI goals.

If you're looking for a fully managed and complete SMS marketing platform with all the key features to humanize and support your entire customers' journey, look no further than Cartloop.

Ready to scale your customer relationships, while driving at least 5x higher ROI? Start today with Cartloop— the first 14-days are on us! Or you can always book a demo with us to see how it works.