Is Attentive or Sailthru better?

Neither clearly leads. Attentive starts at On request and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Attentive or Sailthru?

Attentive starts at On request and Sailthru at On request.

Does Attentive or Sailthru run on more platforms?

Attentive runs on Web, iOS, Android. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.

What is Attentive best used for?

Attentive is most often used for a direct-to-consumer brand where sms is the primary revenue channel and needs cart abandonment triggered within minutes of a session, a retailer capturing in-store phone numbers at the till and needing tcpa-compliant consent records to go with them, a consumer brand running sms and email from one audience so subscribers are not messaged twice for the same promotion, a high-volume merchant with predictable year-round send patterns that can commit to a quarterly minimum and negotiate rates down against it. Of those, a direct-to-consumer brand where sms is the primary revenue channel and needs cart abandonment triggered within minutes of a session and a retailer capturing in-store phone numbers at the till and needing tcpa-compliant consent records to go with them are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.

What can Attentive do that Sailthru cannot?

Attentive covers SMS-first journeys, Two-tap sign-up units, TCPA compliance tooling, Email channel. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

Email Marketing · head to head

Attentive vs Sailthru

Attentive

Email Marketing

Enterprise SMS and email marketing for retail brands, sold on quarterly minimum spend commitments

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Attentive minimum spend commitments are use it or lose it: if quarterly usage falls short, the shortfall is invoiced anyway, which makes Attentive expensive for any brand whose sending is seasonal rather than even.; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
They diverge on capability: Attentive covers SMS-first journeys, Sailthru covers Interest profiles.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Attentive and Sailthru actually diverge.

Attributes where Attentive and Sailthru differ
Attribute	Attentive	Sailthru
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android	Web, REST API

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Email Marketing).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Attentive

SMS-first journeys
Two-tap sign-up units
TCPA compliance tooling
Email channel
Revenue attribution
Concierge
Identity resolution
Negotiated order form rates

Only in Sailthru

Interest profiles
Personalisation engine
Prediction Manager
Site personalisation
Zephyr templating
Lifecycle optimiser

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Attentive

A direct-to-consumer brand where SMS is the primary revenue channel and needs cart abandonment triggered within minutes of a sessionnot Sailthru
A retailer capturing in-store phone numbers at the till and needing TCPA-compliant consent records to go with themnot Sailthru
A consumer brand running SMS and email from one audience so subscribers are not messaged twice for the same promotionnot Sailthru
A high-volume merchant with predictable year-round send patterns that can commit to a quarterly minimum and negotiate rates down against itnot Sailthru

Sailthru

A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Attentive
A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Attentive
High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Attentive
Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot Attentive

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Attentive

Minimum spend commitments are use it or lose it: if quarterly usage falls short, the shortfall is invoiced anyway, which makes Attentive expensive for any brand whose sending is seasonal rather than even.
No rates are published anywhere, so a buyer cannot benchmark a quote before entering a sales process, and the effective per message cost is only visible once an order form is drafted.
Contracts commonly run six to twelve months, so a brand that finds performance disappointing after two months still owes the balance of the term.
Total cost combines a platform fee, per message SMS and MMS charges and carrier pass-through fees, and MMS at two to five cents per message means image-heavy campaigns cost several times what the SMS rate suggests.
It is priced and built for established consumer brands, and the entry commitment puts it out of reach of small merchants that Postscript and similar tools serve on usage-based plans with no floor.

Sailthru

The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

Pricing, plan by plan

Attentive

On request

Attentive$undefined/year
- No public rate card; rates are set in an individual order form
- Platform fee plus per message SMS and MMS charges
- Contracts commonly six to twelve months

Sailthru

On request

Sailthru$undefined/year
- Priced on stored profiles and send volume
- Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
- Annual contract through Marigold

Which should you pick?

Choose Attentive if

You need sms-first journeys.
You work on Web, iOS, Android.
You also want two-tap sign-up units.

Attentive review

Choose Sailthru if

You need interest profiles.
You work on Web, REST API.
You also want personalisation engine.

Sailthru review

Questions people ask

Is Attentive or Sailthru better?: Neither clearly leads. Attentive starts at On request and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Attentive or Sailthru?: Attentive starts at On request and Sailthru at On request.
Does Attentive or Sailthru run on more platforms?: Attentive runs on Web, iOS, Android. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.
What is Attentive best used for?: Attentive is most often used for a direct-to-consumer brand where sms is the primary revenue channel and needs cart abandonment triggered within minutes of a session, a retailer capturing in-store phone numbers at the till and needing tcpa-compliant consent records to go with them, a consumer brand running sms and email from one audience so subscribers are not messaged twice for the same promotion, a high-volume merchant with predictable year-round send patterns that can commit to a quarterly minimum and negotiate rates down against it. Of those, a direct-to-consumer brand where sms is the primary revenue channel and needs cart abandonment triggered within minutes of a session and a retailer capturing in-store phone numbers at the till and needing tcpa-compliant consent records to go with them are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.
What can Attentive do that Sailthru cannot?: Attentive covers SMS-first journeys, Two-tap sign-up units, TCPA compliance tooling, Email channel. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Attentive: How much does Attentive cost?

It does not publish rates. Costs are a platform fee plus per message charges set in your order form, with minimum spend commitments commonly around 2,000 to 3,000 USD per quarter.

Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

Attentive: What happens if I do not use my minimum?

You are invoiced for the shortfall at the end of the quarter. Unused commitment is not carried forward.

Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

Attentive: How long is the contract?

Typically six to twelve months, billed monthly or quarterly.

Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

Attentive: Does it do email as well as SMS?

Yes, with shared audiences and journeys, though the product was designed SMS-first and that remains its strength.

Attentive vs Sailthru

Attentive

Sailthru

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Attentive

Only in Sailthru

What people use each for

Attentive

Sailthru

Where each one falls short

Attentive

Sailthru

Pricing, plan by plan

Attentive

Sailthru

Which should you pick?

Choose Attentive if

Choose Sailthru if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Attentive

More on Sailthru

Keep looking

Other head to heads