Subtext

Premium SMS subscriber tier

Premium SMS platform built for media brands and creators. Used by NBCUniversal, Sony Music, Warner Music, Hearst, Forbes, and The Washington Post. The pitch is the 98% SMS open rate vs ~20% for email — and it's real. Pricing is custom and not cheap; this is enterprise infrastructure, not a Patreon alternative for indie shows.

Subtext is the SMS platform big podcasts and newsrooms use when they want a direct, two-way text-message channel between hosts and an opted-in audience. The pitch is simple: SMS gets a 98% open rate, 90% of opens happen within three minutes, and unlike email or social there's no algorithm filtering messages out. For a paid SMS tier (think "text the host" as a $5-10/month subscriber perk) or for breaking-news coverage where subscribers need to know the moment something happens, Subtext is the established enterprise option. The platform supports two-way conversation (replies route to the host or team inbox), media attachments (audio clips, images), scheduled sends, and segmentation by subscriber attributes. The April 2026 platform expansion added more audience-management and campaign-customization controls. Pricing isn't published — you talk to sales — and historical data points have it starting around $300/mo for small lists and scaling from there. That's enterprise pricing for what's effectively a glorified mailing list and it's hard to justify for indie shows. Where it makes sense: established podcasts with paying subscribers, news/talk shows where breaking-news SMS is a product, podcast networks running multiple shows. Where it doesn't: every indie podcast that should probably just use ConvertKit or Kit for email.