Attentivevs
Klaviyo
Klaviyo: Published usage-based pricing with no minimum commitment, and stronger email if that is your primary channel
Attentive
Enterprise SMS and email marketing for retail brands, sold on quarterly minimum spend commitments
As of 31 August 2026, Attentive's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. An SMS-first marketing platform for consumer brands that publishes no rate card at all. Softwr lists it under Email Marketing. Attentive is made by Attentive Mobile, available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Attentive does
Attentive is a marketing platform built around SMS for direct-to-consumer and retail brands, with email added later so the two channels share audiences and journeys. It covers subscriber acquisition through on-site and in-store sign-up units, list growth compliance under TCPA, segmentation, automated journeys for browse and cart abandonment, campaign sends, and revenue attribution back to individual messages. What distinguishes it commercially is the contract structure rather than the software. Attentive does not publish a rate card. Per message SMS and MMS rates are set in an individual order form, typically somewhere around one to two and a half cents per SMS and two to five cents per MMS depending on negotiated volume, sitting on top of a platform fee. Contracts commonly run six to twelve months with a minimum spend, frequently in the region of two to three thousand dollars per quarter, and if actual usage falls short of the commitment the difference is invoiced anyway. Aggregated buyer data puts median annual contract value around forty thousand dollars. That structure suits brands with predictable high send volumes and punishes seasonal ones. A retailer that does most of its sending in the fourth quarter pays for capacity in the second and third that it never uses.
What people use it 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
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Attentive
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- AttentivevsOmnisend
Omnisend: Much cheaper entry point for small and mid-sized merchants combining email and SMS
- AttentivevsBraze
Braze: If you need cross-channel messaging for an app-led business rather than a retail SMS programme
Pricing
What Attentive costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Attentive
On request
- 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
- Minimum spend commitments, frequently around 2,000 to 3,000 USD per quarter
- Unused commitment is invoiced at quarter end rather than carried forward
- Aggregated buyer data puts median annual contract value near 40,000 USD
Capabilities
Features
SMS-first journeys
Automated abandonment, welcome and win-back flows built around text
Two-tap sign-up units
On-site, in-store and social subscriber acquisition with compliance handling
TCPA compliance tooling
Consent capture and record keeping for US SMS regulation
Email channel
Email campaigns sharing audiences and journeys with SMS
Revenue attribution
Sales attributed to individual sends and journeys
Concierge
Human and AI two-way conversational replies to inbound texts
Identity resolution
Matching anonymous site visitors to known subscribers for triggered sends
Negotiated order form rates
SMS and MMS rates set per contract, not published
Quarterly minimum spend
Commitment billed whether or not it is used
Retail integrations
Deep connections to Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and other commerce platforms
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
How long is the contract?
Typically six to twelve months, billed monthly or quarterly.
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.
Keep looking
Where to go from Attentive
- Attentive alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Attentive pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Attentive badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Email Marketing softwareThe full category
- Best Email Marketing softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Email Marketing software for
Compare Attentive with
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- Omnisend
- Dotdigital
- Moosend
- SAP Emarsys
- Ortto
- Sailthru
- Flodesk
- Sendy
- Brevo
- ActiveCampaign
- EmailOctopus
- RD Station Marketing
- Shortwave
- Moosend
- Ortto
- Sailthru
- Sendy
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Attentive, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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Attentive badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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