Podium vs Textline

Podium publishes its price and Textline no longer does — the reverse of what most comparisons of these two still assume. Checked on 27 August 2026, podium.com/pricing lists Core at $399/month and Pro at $599/month in plain text. Textline's pricing page and its plan comparison carry no base price on either plan; Textline's own FAQ answers "How much does Textline cost?" with "contact our sales team to get a personalized quote." The $59.97 Essentials and $99.97 Pro figures still repeated across 2026 roundups reflect Textline's last published rates and are not shown on Textline's own pages today.

What Textline does still publish is everything stacked on top of the base: 3 agents on Essentials and 5 on Pro, additional agents at $50 and $70/month, 1 and 2 included phone numbers with extras at $15/month, 600 and 2,000 included message credits, add-on credits at $0.03 and automatic backup credits at $0.04, and a $15/month 10DLC campaign fee. You can price every increment to the cent and cannot price the starting point.

Podium is the inverse. A firm headline number, unlimited team members, unlimited contacts, and unlimited one-to-one text messages on all three tiers — with the variability pushed into add-ons, phone seats, and usage caps instead of into the seat count.

Both products are SMS-first tools for businesses whose customers are identified by a phone number, and neither is an omnichannel inbox. The difference is what each one builds around the text thread: Podium wraps reputation management, payments, and lead routing around it, while Textline keeps the product narrow and sells depth inside the inbox — claiming, whispers, dispositions, routes, and surveys.

Which channels do Podium and Textline actually support?

Podium and Textline both cap out at four or five channels, and neither supports WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, or Zalo on any plan. Podium's published channel list is text messaging, its website chat widget, Facebook Messaging, Instagram Messaging, and Google Messaging. Textline's is SMS/MMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Business. The overlap is almost total, and so is the gap: neither tool has an email inbox, so a team handling support email runs a second system alongside either one.

The practical consequence is that the channel axis does not decide this comparison — it decides whether either vendor belongs on your shortlist at all. If your customers message you in apps rather than by SMS, both tools are built on an assumption that no longer holds for your traffic, and the decision moves to a different category of product entirely.

What does Textline charge for a message a customer sends you?

One credit, the same as sending — Textline meters inbound messages, which halves the effective size of every plan's included allotment. The Textline message credit table lists both "Send Text" and "Receive Text" at 1 credit for the United States and Canada, and both "Send Media" and "Receive Media" at 3. A single two-way exchange costs 2 credits. Essentials' 600 included credits therefore cover roughly 300 back-and-forth messages, and Pro's 2,000 cover roughly 1,000.

The same table prices international sends in credit multiples that are easy to miss: a text to the United Kingdom costs 4 credits, Germany 8, Malaysia 17, Indonesia 35, Russia 56, and Papua New Guinea 59. MMS is listed as unavailable outside the US and Canada. At the $0.03 add-on credit rate, one text to Indonesia costs about $1.05. Textline is a domestic tool priced as one, and the international multipliers live two clicks from the pricing page rather than on it.

Every figure below was read off each vendor's own live pages on 27 August 2026, not copied from a third-party roundup. Where a number is no longer published, this page says so rather than repeating a stale one.

What does Podium cost once the add-ons are counted?

Podium's $399 Core and $599 Pro are real list prices, but four separate charges sit outside them. Podium's pricing page documents a $5/month base 10DLC fee for every US location, additional phone numbers at $5/month each beyond the 5 included on Core and 15 on Pro, high-volume carrier-verified messaging at $15/month on Core (included on Pro), and Podium Phones at $30 per user/month for 1–4 users or $25 per user/month at 5 or more — plus a $500 network optimization fee per location.

Podium also publishes Scope of Use caps that trigger overages "at Podium's then-current rates," which are not listed: 4,000 automation segments per location per month, 300 Voice AI minutes, 1,500 AI messaging segments, and 1,000 phone minutes per user. Bulk message credits are capped at 250/month on Core and 500 on Pro, expire monthly, and do not roll over — once spent, you cannot send more until the next cycle without contacting your success manager.

One caveat is repeated under all three tiers and is easy to scroll past: "HVAC businesses should contact sales for applicable pricing." If you run an HVAC company, the $399 on the page is not your price.

What does Textline cost when the base price is unlisted?

You can compute Textline's marginal costs exactly and cannot compute its total, because the base fee is now quote-only. The plan comparison publishes agents (3 on Essentials, 5 on Pro, negotiable on Enterprise), additional agents ($50 and $70/month), included numbers (1 and 2), additional numbers ($15/month), and included credits (600 and 2,000). It does not publish a dollar figure for any plan.

Credit overage is the variable that moves fastest. Add-on credits cost $0.03 and can be purchased only once per billing cycle; once those run out, Textline auto-purchases backup credits at $0.04 in minimum batches of 250. A team that underestimates its month pays the higher rate for the remainder of it. Add the $15/month 10DLC campaign fee, and note that HIPAA-compatible plans carry "different base fees" that Textline also does not publish.

Which is cheaper for a 5-agent team?

Textline, almost certainly — but the honest answer is that only one of the two vendors will tell you its price without a sales call, and it is not Textline. On Podium, 5 agents cost nothing extra: team members are unlimited on every tier, so a 5-person team pays the same $399 + $5 10DLC as a 1-person team, or $404/month. On Textline Pro, 5 agents are included, so the cost is the unlisted Pro base plus the $15 campaign fee plus whatever the team's two-way volume pushes past 2,000 credits.

Against Textline's last published $99.97 Pro rate, that lands near $115/month before overages — roughly a quarter of Podium. Against an unpublished 2026 rate, it lands wherever the quote lands. Converge sits below both at $49/month flat for up to 15 agents with no message metering, though it covers app-based channels rather than SMS, so it is a substitute only if your customers are not texting you.

Choose Podium if generating Google reviews and collecting payments inside the text thread is how the business actually makes money — a dealership, dental practice, furniture retailer, or home services company where one five-star review is worth more than the monthly fee. Unlimited team members on every tier means Podium gets relatively cheaper as headcount grows, which is unusual in this category and the strongest structural argument for it.

Choose Textline if you want a focused shared SMS inbox with real agent workflow — claiming, whispers, dispositions, routes, custom roles, and NPS/CSAT surveys — without paying for a reputation and payments product you will not open. Textline is also the only one of the two you can sign up for and evaluate yourself, with a free trial and no credit card.

Do not buy Podium if you are a single-location shop that mainly needs a shared inbox, if you run an HVAC business expecting the listed $399, or if you need to trial software before a sales conversation — all three Podium tiers route to "Talk to Sales." Do not buy Textline if you text customers outside the US and Canada, where credit multipliers reach 59x a domestic message; if your conversations are heavily two-way, since inbound messages consume credits at the same rate as outbound; or if you need a firm annual budget number before committing, which its pricing page no longer provides.

Podium is the better fit when:

• Review generation and text-to-pay drive measurable revenue, not convenience
• Your team is large enough that unlimited seats beat a per-agent plan
• You operate multiple US locations and want one lead-conversion system across them
• You are comfortable buying through a demo and an annual commitment
• Your industry is on Podium's list — retail, auto, home services, health and wellness — and is not HVAC, which is quoted separately

Textline is the better fit when:

• You want a shared SMS inbox with agent-level workflow and nothing else
• Your messaging is domestic US or Canadian and predictable in volume
• You need HIPAA-compatible texting and can absorb the separate, unpublished HIPAA base fee
• You want to trial the product yourself before speaking to anyone
• A 3-to-5 agent team fits inside an included allotment without overage

Neither is the right shortlist when your customers reach you on WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram DMs, Discord, Zalo, or email rather than by SMS. Podium and Textline both assume a phone number is the customer identifier, and neither offers an email inbox, so a support team handling email runs a second tool alongside either. Converge covers those app-based channels in one inbox at $49/month flat for up to 15 agents, with no per-message credits — but it does not send SMS, so it replaces these tools only for teams whose customers have already moved into apps.