A post did what you wanted it to do. The door opened more than usual, the counter was busy for two days, and those visits are already fading. You want a review request in front of those people while they still remember, arriving as a text rather than an email nobody opens, and you want the price before you hand over a card number. The pricing pages of the tools built for this job do not make that easy.
The moment a walk-in becomes a review
The window is short and it is not really about software. Someone came in because of something they saw, and for a few days that visit is specific enough to write about. After that it flattens into a general impression, which produces either nothing or four vague words.
Which is why the channel matters more than the feature list. Email lands in a pile. A text lands on the screen the person is already holding, which is why vendors market texting as their primary collection method and why text is the channel they meter and surcharge. The plan price is rarely the price of texting.
Everything below comes from fetching each vendor’s own pricing page directly on 7 September 2026. No third-party roundups. Every figure carries the date it was checked.
What “starting price” means when you check the page yourself
Most owners bring an assumption to this category, which is that there must be a free tier somewhere. Checked on 7 September 2026, the two best-known names do not offer one.
Birdeye’s pricing page carries no plan names and no dollar figures at all. The only interactive element is a short form: a dropdown for how many locations you run, banded 1-3, 4-9, 10-39, 40-249, 250-999, and 1000+, a field labelled “Best mobile number to reach you”, and a GET PRICING button. That is the whole disclosure, with no hidden free plan behind it and no published number to anchor against.
Podium goes the other way and publishes most of it. Its pricing page names three packages: Core, Pro, and Signature. Core and Pro carry published monthly prices, and Signature carries the label “Custom pricing” instead of a figure. As published on 7 September 2026, Core is $399 a month and Pro is $599 a month. A currency toggle shows a second set of figures, 459 and 689, so confirm which currency you are reading.
What each plan actually includes for sending
The plan price is the cover charge. Sending capacity is what you are buying, and Podium’s comparison table is specific about it. The figures below come from the Usage and Lead Capture sections of podium.com/pricing on 7 September 2026.
| Line item | Core | Pro | Signature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published monthly price | $399 | $599 | Custom pricing |
| Bulk Messages | 250 credits/mo | 500 credits/mo | Custom |
| Phone Numbers Included | 5 numbers | 15 numbers | Custom |
| Each additional phone number | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month |
| Base 10DLC fee, all US locations | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month |
| Contacts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Two footnotes on that table are doing real work. The first is an asterisk under the Lead Capture and Conversion Features section: a base 10DLC fee of $5 a month is charged for all US locations. 10DLC is the US carrier registration scheme for business texting on standard ten-digit numbers, and Podium’s FAQ states the base fee includes 3 message segments per second and up to 2,000 T-Mobile messages per day per location. It is billed separately from the plan and applies whether you send one text or two thousand. The second footnote, under Usage, prices every additional number at $5 a month.
The credit definition matters too. Podium describes Bulk Messages credits as a credit-based system where credits consumed per message vary with message length and content, notes each plan includes a small allocation, says you can purchase additional credits through a Bulk Messages plan or add-on, and states credits expire monthly and do not roll over. Its FAQ adds that at the limit you cannot send further bulk messages until the following month, and raising the cap means contacting your customer success manager. The page does not split credits by channel, so as published they are channel-agnostic: 250 credits on Core is 250 credits of bulk sending, not 250 texts plus an email allowance on the side.
That matters here, because a traffic spike is not an average month. If a post sends more people through the door than the allowance covers, the credits run out before the list does, and buying more is another line item.
A free tier whose text channel does not travel
Trustmary is the contrast case, because a free option does exist there. Its pricing page leads with a “Start for free” call to action, and the tiers carried in its own source are Solo, Starter, Business, and Scale, with a free label alongside them. Its price cards render in the browser, and no dollar or euro figure resolved in this fetch, so no Trustmary price is quoted here.
What did render, in plain text, is the FAQ. Asked “How can I distribute survey or testimonial forms?”, Trustmary answers: “You can distribute them through unique URL, QR code, email, SMS (in Europe), embedded to website or app, and email signature.”
Read that list again. Five of the six channels carry no qualifier. SMS carries one, and the qualifier is a continent. A small business in Ohio has to establish before signing up, not after, whether the text channel exists for them at all, and no tier upgrade changes a geography note. This is one vendor stating one limitation on its own page, not evidence about the category.
What to check before the walk-in memory fades
- Is a per-location texting fee inside the advertised price or outside it? Podium’s $5 a month base 10DLC charge is the named example: disclosed in an asterisk, applied to all US locations, separate from the $399 or $599 plan figure. Ask the rep to show you the line item.
- Is there a hard cap on bulk sends, and does it survive a spike? Core includes 250 credits a month and Pro includes 500, credits vary by message length, they expire monthly with no rollover, and Podium’s FAQ says additional credits can be purchased through a Bulk Messages plan or add-on. Size the included allowance against your best week, not your average one.
- Is the price public at all? If the pricing page asks for your location count and your mobile number instead of showing a figure, as Birdeye’s does, get the quote before you assume anything about what this category costs.
- Is text available on the plan you are quoted, in your region? Trustmary’s own FAQ qualifies SMS as available in Europe while listing five other channels without a qualifier. Comparing prices for two different capabilities is not a comparison.
The same metering pattern shows up on the inbound side in a lead-capture tool that meters by response the same way, and it is worth seeing what happens when a free plan’s cap actually gets hit. For the posting side, there is a weekly routine for small-business owners posting on social.
Prices verified, and what this is not
All prices, plan names, credit allowances, and fee notes above were fetched from each vendor’s own pricing page on 7 September 2026. This is not Watchdog data and it is not on followedapp’s re-verification schedule. It is a single point-in-time check, so treat every figure as accurate on that date and unconfirmed after it. followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost, and RecurPost is covered here under the same rules as every other vendor.
FAQ
Does Birdeye have a free plan or a published starting price?
No. Checked on 7 September 2026, birdeye.com/pricing shows no plan names and no dollar figures anywhere. It collects a location count and a mobile number, then returns a quote through sales.
What does Podium’s cheapest plan cost?
Core, at $399 a month as published on podium.com/pricing on 7 September 2026. It includes 250 Bulk Messages credits a month, which expire without rolling over, and 5 phone numbers. A base 10DLC fee of $5 a month is charged on top for all US locations, so the texting floor sits above the plan figure.
Why is there a separate fee just to send text messages?
Because business texting on standard ten-digit US numbers runs through a carrier registration scheme called 10DLC, and vendors bill it as its own line. Podium discloses a base 10DLC fee of $5 a month for all US locations, separate from the plan price, covering 3 message segments per second and up to 2,000 T-Mobile messages per day per location. The knowledgebase article it links did not resolve on 7 September 2026, so nothing here is drawn from it.
Is SMS review-request sending available everywhere?
Not necessarily. Trustmary’s own pricing FAQ lists distribution as unique URL, QR code, email, SMS “in Europe”, embed, and email signature, so the text channel carries a regional qualifier the others do not. Check whether SMS covers your own region before comparing prices. That is one vendor’s stated limitation and says nothing about the rest.
Sources
- podium.com/pricing, fetched 7 September 2026: plan prices, Bulk Messages credits, phone numbers, the additional-number and base 10DLC fee notes, and the FAQ answers on credits and limits.
- birdeye.com/pricing, fetched 7 September 2026: no published plan names or prices, location-band dropdown and mobile number field returning a quote.
- trustmary.com/pricing, fetched 7 September 2026: the FAQ answer on distributing survey and testimonial forms.