Remindly vs SimpleTexting pricing: $1,044 vs $34 once

OneTimeSuite Blog · Published 2026-07-21

SimpleTexting starts at $29 a month, forever, for 500 credits on top of effectively the same carrier network you're already paying for. Remindly sends templated reminders through your own Twilio account, so the metered SMS cost stays on your bill at carrier-ish rates and is never marked up. $34, once. A busy shop's reminders cost about $4/mo in real Twilio fees instead of a SaaS markup on them.

This is the full pricing breakdown: what SimpleTexting actually costs over one, two and three years, what Remindly gives you for $34 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.

What SimpleTexting actually costs you

At $29+/mo, one SimpleTexting subscription adds up to $348 every year — $1,044 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Remindly is $34 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.

Three years in, the gap is $1,010 — and every year after that adds another $348 to the subscription side of the ledger.

Remindly vs SimpleTexting, feature by feature

Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:

What you get for $34, once

Self-hosted appointment reminder tool that sends SMS and email through your own Twilio and SMTP. The highlights:

• 📅 Appointments — Manual entry or CSV import with per-row validation and error reporting.
• ⏱️ Reminder rules — Any offset like 24h, 2h or 15min, by SMS or email, with per-rule templates and merge fields.
• 💬 Two-way confirm — Clients reply C to confirm or R to reschedule via the Twilio inbound webhook, with confirmed / pending / no-reply status.
• 🚫 STOP/START opt-out — Compliant by design — STOP blocks all future sends to that number and is logged, START re-subscribes.

Remindly costs about one month of SimpleTexting once — after year one you pay only the SMS fees you were already going to pay anyway.

Switching is 3 steps

1. Buy once on Whop. One payment of $34 gets you the packaged Windows installer wired up, or clone the MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/appointment-reminder-sms-mvp and run it free.
2. Connect your Twilio and SMTP. Drop your own Account SID, Auth Token and from-number into Settings, and add SMTP if you want email reminders.
3. Import appointments and set rules. Load appointments manually or by CSV, define reminder offsets, and let the scheduler send while clients reply C or R.

When paying SimpleTexting is still the right call

Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that SimpleTexting's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $29+/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.

If that's you, Remindly is $34, once. For the deeper dive, read the Remindly vs SimpleTexting head-to-head.

Frequently asked questions

Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Remindly is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/appointment-reminder-sms-mvp. The $34 buys the packaged Windows installer with everything wired up; building from source is free.

Am I still paying for SMS?
Yes, but only the real carrier fee. Twilio charges ~$0.0079 per SMS on your own account and Remindly never marks it up — you skip the SaaS fee stacked on top, not the carrier cost.

Where does my client data live?
In your own SQLite file on your box, self-hosted with your own API keys — nothing goes to a third-party cloud.

More on SimpleTexting pricing

Remindly — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns