SimpleTexting costs $29+/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $1,044 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$29+/mo is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Remindly: the pay-once alternative
Remindly does the same core job for $34, once. Self-hosted appointment reminder tool that sends SMS and email through your own Twilio and SMTP.
| Remindly | SimpleTexting | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $34 once | $29+/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $34 + your SMS fees | $348+ |
| 500 appts/mo SMS cost | ~$4 (your Twilio bill) | Included, then overage |
| Two-way confirm (C/R) | Yes | Yes |
| No-show analytics | Yes — per weekday and hour | No |
| Quiet hours | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted / your data | Yes — SQLite, your box | No |
| API keys | Yours (BYO) | Theirs |
Remindly costs about one month of SimpleTexting once — after year one you pay only the SMS fees you were already going to pay anyway.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need SimpleTexting's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Remindly is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Remindly — $34, once
Self-hosted appointment reminder tool that sends SMS and email through your own Twilio and SMTP.