The Best SMSBump Alternatives for 2021

If you're a Shopify store looking for an SMS partner and platform to scale up effortlessly and internationally this year, look no further. You may be already familiar with SMS marketing and SMSBump because of its "free installation" and global support.

While there is some merit to use SMSBump for your Shopify store, there are alternatives available that can offer much more phenomenally advanced features that modern customers would look for this year.

Due to its lack of features to bring the conversational approach to text marketing, the flexibility of campaigns and a full customer lifecycle support, SMSBump may not be the SMS platform of choice.

Here are 5 SMS marketing platforms that can help you move past automated blasts to humanize your customer journey and build your tribe of returning customers. A more seamless setup process and straightforward pricing model included.

What You Should Know About SMSBump

How does SMSBump Work

SMSBump works for Shopify and Shopify Plus brands and stores that want to put their SMS and MMS marketing on autopilot through automation.

If you're running a smaller outfit or just testing the waters with SMS Marketing, it might make sense to use an automated, self-service SMS platform. Here's a quick rundown.

Is SMSBump conversational?

No. SMSBump is focused mostly on text marketing and automations.

Does SMSBump offer ?

Unlike some SMS marketing platforms that are a fully-managed service, SMSBump is a do-it-yourself service. So while you have automations to capture subscribers on multiple stages of their shopping journey, you'd have to set these automations up yourself.

Does SMSBump offer Two-Way Campaigns?

Some brands use campaigns to reach out with timely but limited offers, announcements, or personalized messages to build actual relationships with their shoppers. There's more to staying top of mind with your customers than: "you need this" and "did you forget something?".

With two-way campaigns, you can talk to your customers and make sure you provide them with valuable content that they'd love. On the other hand, SMSBump is an SMS Marketing automation for Shopify.

For brands, you want a reliable and personalized approach that can keep a conversation alive with your shoppers to build stronger relationships and drive more revenue this year. Ideally, you want a fully-serviced SMS platform that can combine sales and support under one communication as your business and subscriber list grows.

As your business grows, you might want to some extras that can propel you past automated SMS blasts. Here are some great features we think you should look out for and a self-service platform of your choice.

  • An easy and guided setup and integration for your Shopify store
  • Integrated and seamless customer support features to support your entire customer lifecycle
  • The flexibility to send out your own SMS campaigns
  • Personalized, targeted messaging and product recommendations for your shoppers
  • A combined channel for sales and support all in one
  • Deeper qualitative and quantitative analytics and insights into your customers
  • An efficient and personalized way of contacting your customers
  • A single point of contact for each of your customers with dedicated phone numbers
  • A fully-managed SMS platform to save your team the time and cost

So, if you're hungry what's out there and what it can do for your store, you're probably not the only one.

Let's take a look at some of the options below for you to make that switch.

6 SMSBump Alternatives for 2021

1. Cartloop

Cartloop works for brands that want to truly engage with shoppers in real-time, with real people behind each conversation. Unlike SMSBump, Cartloop is a fully-managed service and offers full customer lifecycle support during each crucial touchpoint with your customers before and after they make a purchase.

Cartloop thrives on real conversations with clients, true conversational marketing, and having actual chats with your shoppers. This includes:

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

How Cartloop is really Conversational ✨

When a customer responds to your text, their replies are forwarded to your support email or a dashboard but taken over by Cartloop's live agents to help you recover up to 5x more abandoned carts. They're trained experts who know your brand to provide instant support 24/7 across multiple different time zones.

At the moment, Cartloop supports sending text messages to subscribers in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK— and more countries are being added to this list.

Want to let build stronger relationships with your customers this year and drive more revenue at the same time?  Cartloop's 2-way campaigns are a valuable tool in building actual relationships with your shoppers.

In short, Cartloop's features include:

  • Fully-managed conversational SMS marketing platform
  • 24/7 Live Agents to manage 1:1 customer interactions
  • Personalized Product Recommendations
  • Local and dedicated phone numbers
  • 2-Way SMS Campaigns
  • Pre- and post-purchase support
  • Abandonment Insights
  • Product Analytics
  • Sleek integrations with Gorgias, ReCharge, Zipify and CartHook

Cartloop Pricing Plans

Cartloop's pricing model is pretty straightforward. We charge our clients based on the revenue you generate using their SMS marketing. If you're successful, we're successful— a must-have for brands that want to drive more revenue with no risk.

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

What Customers are Saying About Cartloop

With an overall 5-star rating on their Shopify App store, Cartloop so far has no reviews under 4 stars. Pretty impressive.

Most of the reviewers have waxed lyrical on the quality of customer support they've received from the team and how effective the SMS service was to recover abandoned carts.

20x more return on ad spend

Review from Shopify App Store

Going the extra mile to offer genuine value—and shoppers love it!

Review from Shopify App Store

How to Setup Cartloop for your Shopify Store

If you're sold on going conversational and want to switch from SMSBump to Cartloop. 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. Start recovering your abandoned carts

As Cartloop is a fully-managed SMS platform, the setup is basically complete at Step 2! Cartloop's Live Experts will immediately take over once an event triggers the cart abandonment SMS flow.

If you're a visual learner and you prefer to see how it's done for yourself, you can request a free demo here.

The Bottom Line for Cartloop

Cartloop offers everything your business needs from an SMS marketing platform to recover abandoned carts, keep a conversation alive with your shoppers and provide instant support efficiently— and effortlessly.

No messy setup process, no confusing pricing models. And most importantly, no ghosting (we reply when you send us a message). And with how helpful and friendly the Cartloop team is, you'll feel as if you have an extension of your in-house team whenever you need them. 💬

But before you make a decision, we want to help you really get your SMS marketing game off the ground. And this means making the best possible informed choice that you could make.

Read on to explore the other SMS marketing platforms are out there and how they match up.

2. Postscript

Postscript is another great option for brands and stores only want to automate their SMS and send SMS campaigns, and optimized only to send to shoppers in the US and Canada.

Although it does offer its own two-way conversations and an SMS campaign feature that SMSBump does not, it may not be the perfect fit for small businesses and founders who can't afford the additional hours each week.

Postscript is not a fully managed SMS service. So to enable two-way conversations, communications with customers who respond and seek assistance over text will be forwarded to your support email.

Postscript Pricing Plans

The Postscript pricing model runs on a credit system to cater to brands that are looking for more flexibility. With some additional maths required.

  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.

If you love math, they have a calculator here for this.

What Customers are Saying about Postscript

The credit system is a little hard to follow but manageable"

Review from G2

My only area of disappointment is analytics and the UI. I'm constantly asking our rep to pull things manually because it's not possible to do in the interface, and I feel bad. The tool is very light on features to sort your flows/campaigns. Which causes a lot of headache as you get a more complex account or want to look at historical data. You are left clicking through list after list of campaigns and automations which by default show lifetime numbers. There's no date range function in flows/campaigns."

Review from G2

"Spent an entire work week working with their support team"

Review from Shopify App Store

"A good platform but it is very focused on USA customers"

Review from Shopify App Store

The Bottom Line for Postscript

While Postscript is a comprehensive SMS marketing service, choosing your pricing model and learning how to wield it may take some extra time to navigate. If you and your team are low on bandwidth, this is an area to note. And deliverability to customers outside of the US and Canada is not guaranteed.

3. Emotive

Emotive is another SMS marketing tool but more suited to enterprise-level brands that want to be hands-on with their SMS marketing channel.

Like Cartloop, Emotive offers customer support beyond the traditional automated bots and marketing blasts.

Although they also have a dedicated team to text your shoppers, there is one big difference in how they approach conversational SMS. Emotive is not a fully human-managed service— to master the learning curve of their automation tool also requires time.

The availability of their team does not guarantee 24/7 instant support for your shoppers.

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

What Customers are Saying about Emotive

The delivery of Emotive is lacking and we spent way too much time (hours) pointing out flaws: lack of slack integration, inconsistent verbiage, no trigger for follow up response, etc. We are now stuck paying for a service we don't feel comfortable using. A shame given we are a small business and every $$ matters. "

Review from G2.

The customer communication tool is a bit hard to use, and sometimes challenging."

Review from Capterra

The Bottom Line for Emotive

Emotive offers a somewhat conversational approach to SMS marketing. But it may not be refined enough to actively engage with your shoppers and focus on their lifetime value to your business.

Based on the reviews, Emotive's rates are not very accessible to small businesses. And if you feel up for a challenge, you can navigate and check out how their Emotive automation tool works to automate your responses using branch logic.

If you want to offer personalized experiences for your customer, we might suggest other alternatives on our list that can take you past the "set it and forget it" mindset of automation.

4. Attentive

Attentive Pricing Plans

Attentive doesn't really disclose their pricing on their website, and it seems that they offer only custom plans. They don't offer free trials for their platform, so you'll have to book a demo to get a quote.

What Customers are Saying about Attentive

Only sends texts to the USA, I would like to send to other countries.

Review from G2

The tools available for customer service are somewhat lacking. I know this is something that's being addressed in their product roadmap, but in the mean time we do need to use an external service for CS/CX."

Review from Capterra

The Bottom Line for Attentive

Attentive has recently expanded to include both text and email marketing for Shopify, Shopify Plus brands, and other eCommerce platforms. However, they have yet to include international coverage.

It is also another self-service platform. Though they're building on their roadmap, you can get a clear pricing overview, international coverage, and a combined customer support and sales channel all in one conversational SMS marketing platform like Cartloop.

5. Liverecover

That's pretty impressive. But did you know that you can convert 31% of abandoned carts with Cartloop? 💌

LiveRecover is also a conversational SMS marketing app powered by real people to contact, engage and convert abandoned carts. But it's lacking critical features that make it the SMS platform of choice.

International coverage is one of them— if you're located and selling outside the US and Canada, you'll have to rely on a separate app to reach your shoppers. No matter where your customer base is, you'd want a complete SMS platform that satiates the entire customer journey.

Of course, some additional nifty features such as 2-way text campaigns, on-brand pop-ups, and product analytics would be great. But these are not available with LiveRecover.

One tip: if you're offering worldwide shipping, you'll definitely need a customer support channel that can keep up.

Liverecover Pricing Plans

LiveRecover offers 3 types of 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 Customers are Saying about Liverecover

Customers can tell they are texting a real human

"Total set it and forget it app. Customers can tell they are texting a real human too which makes all the difference in terms of customer service quality."

Review on Shopify App Store.

The team is legit at communicating with customers

Review on Shopify App Store.

The Bottom Line for Liverecover

In 2021, eCommerce sales are projected to reach a new high. It shows no signs of slowing down with a 265% growth rate. To scale internationally and sell without borders is only the next natural step with an SMS service like Cartloop.

And having a conversational approach can easily solve 90% of your issues. If you can expand your customer support network to shoppers in the UK and Australia, not just the US and Canada— you've already gotten miles ahead of the competition.

But here's the thing, using two different SMS marketing apps for your store means you might never fully gain control and the full picture over your customers' journey— and it may not be worth the cost.

Cartloop: The best SMSBump Alternative for 2021

If you're looking for an SMSBump alternative, Cartloop's got you covered. 💬

Unlike SMSBump and most of its competitors, Cartloop offers a complete SMS marketing platform with all the key features to humanize and support your entire customers' journey. With a dedicated phone number they can text back to and a real person on the other end, it's a real conversational experience like no other.

Being a fully managed conversational SMS service is just the icing on top of the cake, here's a summary of what your experience will look like with us:

  • Gain actionable abandonment insights from your customers
  • Sleek integrations with Gorgias, ReCharge, Zipify and CartHook
  • 24/7 instant support from Cartloop's Live Experts
  • On-brand Pop-ups
  • Two-Way SMS Campaigns
  • Dedicated 10DLC numbers for your customers
  • International coverage for the US, Canada, UK, and Australia
  • More countries coming soon ✨

Here are 5 best use cases of conversational SMS marketing that combine sales and support under one communication for your shoppers:

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

Ready to make the switch? You can start having 1:1 conversations in real-time with your customers today with Cartloop— the first 14-days are on us!

Not convinced yet? Then you should check out our latest case study of how DTC brands are seeing up to 30x in ROI from sending Cartloop's Two-way SMS campaigns.

Jun-Li is a content person at Cartloop. When she's not writing a blog article, you can find her collecting a new hobby or doing yoga.

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