10 Smart Tips to Optimize SMS Gateway Costs in 2025

How to reduce SMS gateway costs?

Although many new communication channels have emerged, SMS is still one of the fastest and most reliable ways to reach your audience. No matter why, you can use SMS for sending verification codes, updates, or marketing content.

Of course, SMS marketing isn’t as simple as sending a few texts from your phone. You need advanced tools to maximize speed and efficiency in your campaigns.

The challenge is that many companies, especially small businesses, can’t afford the cost of these tools. For example, many SMS gateways charge for each SMS sent, and they only give a discount for large SMS packages, which is not suitable for SMBs.

But don’t worry. You just need to get smarter about how you manage messaging and the tools you use, especially SMS gateways.

In this blog post, we’ll explain how you can minimize the cost of SMS gateways and increase the ROI of your SMS campaigns.

1. Determine Your SMS Usage 

To reduce the cost of SMS gateways, you need to determine exactly why you’re using SMS and how much you need it. This stage is critical and greatly impacts the overall expense in your SMS campaigns.

Audit Your Messaging Pattern

Before you try to cut costs, you must determine the following parameters:

• Message Volume: Number of texts sent daily or monthly.
• Message Types: OTPs, promotions, alerts, etc.
• Destinations: Countries and carriers receiving the messages.
• Delivery Performance: Success/failure rates and common failure points.
• Timing & Engagement: Peak sending times, user response rates, and engagement quality.

This way, you can find a great portion of your SMS messages that waste time and money. 

Identify & Remove Inefficiencies

Also, you can detect inefficiencies like:

• Outdated or incorrect numbers
• Users who haven’t engaged in months
• Duplicate or overlapping messages from different teams

The good news is that tools connected to your CRM can flag these issues. You just need regular cleanups of your lists, especially opt-out and bounce data. This way, you’ll reduce the inefficiencies and optimize the cost per SMS for your SMS gateways.

2. Pick the Right SMS Gateway Provider

The cost of SMS gateways can vary significantly. They offer various pricing packages and payment models. You must choose an SMS gateway with a suitable cost per SMS according to your budget. This doesn’t mean that you must choose the cheapest SMS gateway, but the right one!

Compare Pricing Models

First, try to review all the pricing models to choose the best one based on your business requirements:

1. Pay-As-You-Go: In this SMS gateway pricing model, you pay only for the messages you send. In other words, there are no contracts or monthly fees. If you can’t predict your message volumes, this model is best for you.

2. Tiered Pricing: This is when SMS providers offer discounted rates as your volume increases. For example, sending 100,000 messages per month has a lower per-message rate than sending 10,000.

3. Monthly Subscription: As the name suggests, in a monthly subscription model, you pay a fixed fee for a set number of messages in a month. If you have consistent message volumes, you must choose this model to reduce SMS gateway costs.

4. Credits-Based: You must pay for a certain number of credits, which equals a message or a segment. This model is best when you can estimate SMS usage accurately because credits expire.

5. Hybrid Models: Some SMS providers offer combinations. For example, you pay for a base subscription with additional fees for overage or premium features like delivery analytics or faster routes.

When you understand your requirements and choose the right SMS gateway with a suitable pricing model, you’ll reduce your SMS gateway costs.

Understand What Affects the Final Cost

Apart from pricing models, you must recognize the factors that affect your SMS gateway costs, such as:

• Country or region
• API features or delivery reports
• Support levels and SLAs
• Set-up or maintenance fees

Other important considerations include uptime, scalability, and compliance with local regulations (such as DND lists).

So, try to determine the scale of your campaigns and then review the pricing models of the SMS gateways that offer the best features at that scale. Now, you can choose the most cost-effective SMS gateway for your campaign.

To start with, here are some of the best cheap SMS gateway providers:

1. Notifyre: Affordable SMS with advanced features like two-way messaging and 99.99% uptime.

2. ClickSend: Low-cost SMS with global reach and price match guarantee.

3. Messente: Competitive pricing for high volumes with premium analytics.

4. BulkSMS: Cost-effective, high-volume messaging with simple API integration.

5. Textla: Ideal for small campaigns.

3. Choose the Right SMS Tool

Many times, you need to integrate your SMS campaigns into your websites or applications. Using custom APIs might increase the cost for developers and also waste your time.

So, try to go for cost-effective and versatile SMS tools like WP SMS to integrate your SMS gateways into your WordPress website.

This way, you can run your SMS campaigns directly from your WordPress dashboard without switching to any other platform.

WP SMS allows you to segment, personalize, and automate your messages without learning any programming languages.

It has a user-friendly interface and supports more than 350 SMS gateways around the world. It offers a free plan with basic features and cost-effective plans for advanced features.

Using this plugin, your SMS marketing costs will be minimized, and you will reach as many audiences as possible.

So, why wait? Try the demo version of WP SMS to test its capabilities and then go for the premium packages.

4. Route Messages Smarter

Smart routing means choosing the best delivery route based on cost, speed, and success rates.

In other words, instead of sending all your text messages (SMS) using one path, your system chooses the best way to send them.

It’s a method that happens in the background to make sure messages get delivered efficiently without paying more than you have to. Smart routing saves you money and ensures your messages reach people reliably.

If you work with more than one SMS provider, route different types of messages accordingly. For example:

• OTPs: Send through the fastest and most reliable route
• Marketing messages: Use a more affordable route.

It’s also important to distribute traffic to avoid downtime or slow delivery during busy periods.

To use smart routing, you need a system that can decide which provider to use for each message. You have two main options:

1. Use a middleware solution that acts like a traffic director.
2. Build a custom routing engine that evaluates which provider is cheapest or most reliable before sending each message.

5. Use Short and Direct Message Content

As you know, SMS has a limit of 160 characters, and if you write more than that, you’ll be charged for two messages.

Also, if you’re running multilingual SMS campaigns, you must pay attention to the fact that the cost and the limitations might vary based on the scripts you use.

So, try to write simple, direct, and to-the-point message content to reduce the cost of your SMS gateways. 

It’s good to prepare a smart SMS template for each purpose. Here are some examples:

• Example 1: Appointment Reminder

• Example 2: Payment Confirmation

• Example 3: Promotional Offer

6. Use Link Shorteners

One of the most important elements in your SMS templates is the URL to your landing pages. Adding links is a smart way to boost engagement rates in your SMS campaigns and drive traffic to your website.

However, many URLs are too long to include in a single message. So, what to do? Thanks to tools like Bitly, you can easily shorten your URLs to take up less space and create a better appearance.

Fortunately, WP SMS supports link shorteners and allows you to cut the SMS price by reducing the size of your messages.

7. Send Relevant Messages to Segmented Audiences

When you send a single message to everyone, many people ignore it because they don’t find it relevant.

Even with a laser-targeted audience, you still need to segment your subscribers and send personalized messages. This approach helps you optimize your SMS campaigns, boost engagement rates, and reduce the overall cost of SMS.

Try segmenting your subscribers based on factors such as:

• Behavior (e.g., buyers vs. browsers)
• Location (e.g., matching promo times to local hours)
• Engagement (e.g., only send to users who clicked in the past 30 days)
• Preferences (e.g., only send offers to users who want them)

By doing so, you’ll achieve a higher SMS ROI. Tools like WP SMS allow you to segment your subscribers effectively, and you can even use real-time segments with CRM triggers.

8. Automate Triggers and Scheduling

Timing is a critical matter in the success of SMS campaigns. Sending a useful message at the wrong time can lead to lower engagement or even complaints.

Remember that no one wants a marketing SMS at 2 AM. So, avoid early morning or late-night messages and try to match appointment reminders to business hours.

You also need to respect the user’s time zone to maximize the efficiency of your SMS campaigns.

The other important matter is to send messages based on specific actions, like:

• Cart left behind
• Payment failed
• Order shipped
• The customer asked a question

This way, you kill two birds with a single stone. First, you send fewer messages. Second, your messages deliver exactly when users are ready to see them.

So, make sure that you’re using a great scheduling and automation tool like WP SMS to maximize the efficiency of your message timing. 

9. Keep an Eye on the Bills

You must constantly track the results and find where you’re wasting your money. 

Even optimized campaigns can leak cash through:

• Double sends from the API retries
• Invalid numbers
• High-cost premium routes
• Penalties from non-compliance

So, you must check billing reports monthly to find if billed messages match sent logs and rates match what you were quoted.

Also, make sure that failed messages aren’t charged, and there are no spikes from unusual regions.

It’s good to make someone in your team responsible for monthly SMS audits. A simple checklist can catch a lot.

10. Don’t Rely on SMS for Everything

Last but not least, you have to optimize your marketing campaigns in terms of using various channels, along with SMS.

You can’t use SMS for every marketing and customer support effort. It’s essential to create an omnichannel marketing strategy to maximize the ROI of your campaigns.

Here is a simple guide to using various channels for different tasks:

Channel	Cost	Best For	Drawbacks
SMS	High	Urgent reminders, OTPs, Last-minute promotions	Limited characters
Email	Low	Receipts, long messages	Can get ignored
Push Notifications	Very Low	App users	App must be installed
WhatsApp	Medium	2-way chat, support	Opt-in required

Overall, you can:

• Use SMS only when timing or visibility really matter
• Use email or push for other updates
• Let users choose how they want to hear from you

Final Thoughts

As messaging costs continue to rise, smart businesses won’t cut SMS, they’ll simply use it more effectively. The key is clarity: know what you’re sending, who you’re sending it to, when, and why. Match the message to the moment, and avoid overpaying for tasks that could be handled more efficiently.

With smarter routing, sharper segmentation, and strategic use of alternative channels, you can keep your communication top-notch without breaking the bank.

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