Postscript Review, Pricing & Features
What is Postscript?
Postscript is a SMS marketing platform for Shopify that helps ecommerce businesses execute successful SMS marketing campaigns. Over 3,500 businesses have used Postscript for their Shopify stores. Postscript is preferable for small businesses looking for an affordable SMS marketing solution that has more complex features than tools like SimpleTexting. Although automation is superb in Postscript, list building and campaigns are handled better in more expensive alternatives like SMSBump.
Table of Contents
- What is Postscript?
- Postscript Review Summary
- Postscript Pricing & Cost
- Postscript Features
- Postscript Integrations
- Postscript Customer Service
- Postscript Alternatives & Competitors
- Is Postscript Right For You?
Postscript Review Summary
Postscript was founded by Alex Beller, Adam Turner, and Colin Turner in 2018. Today, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with about 50 full time employees. The company has serviced over 1,000 businesses.
Postscript’s features are similar to most SMS marketing tools. Automations, which allow you to send personalized messages based on specific customer actions, are its standout feature. List and campaign building, however, are less comprehensive than alternatives like SMSBump.
Postscript’s pricing ranges from $25 to over $500. Prices are based solely on messages. This makes Postscript one of the more affordable SMS marketing solutions for Shopify store owners.
Overall, Postscript is ideal for Shopify businesses looking for an affordable SMS marketing tool. Postscript handles the most important parts of SMS marketing very well, and stands as the most affordable ecommerce-specific tool we’ve tested. If pricing is not a main concern, consider options like SMSBump.
Postscript Pricing & Cost
Postscript pricing starts at $25 per month. Pricing is based on the amount of messages sent per month. Inbound messages are free, and prices include all carrier fees.
| Messages Sent | 2,500 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 30,300 | 40,400 | 50,500 |
|
Price | $25 | $50 | $100 | $200 | $300 | $400 | $500 |
Postscript Features
Let’s discuss the major features that Postscript offers and how they can help your SMS marketing and ecommerce goals. Product screenshots are included to add context and demonstrate the user interface.
Subscriber List Building
Keywords, pop-ups, opt-in links, and QR codes are the four ways to add subscribers to your lists using Postscript. These options are serviceable but aren’t as conducive to creating detailed customer segments and personalized automated messages. Additionally, there is no way to manually build a list.
Keywords
Keywords are phrases that customers text to become subscribers. They are one of the primary ways to build a SMS contact list. Unfortunately, keyword creation in Postscript is basic. This affects your ability to fully optimize your keywords for subscriber growth.
There are not many options in the keyword creation page. Having an option to create a segment that your keyword is linked to would be much more helpful. You can achieve this in the segments page, but the process feels slow and counterintuitive. Many SMS marketing alternatives support this.
You can edit your automated response once you’ve created your keyword. You have the option of adding custom fields, coupon codes, discount links, or product links. These options are specific and particularly helpful for ecommerce businesses looking to personalize their automated keyword responders.
Pop-Ups
Pop-Ups are another common way to add subscribers to a list. They appear on your Shopify page after a time delay with a phone collection form.
The standout feature here is inclusion and exclusion of specific pages where your pop-up can be shown. The editor is generally manageable but isn’t user-friendly. Additionally, the lack of data collection options will limit experienced SMS marketers.
Alternatives like SimpleTexting allow you to capture phone numbers and customer data that can be used to segment and personalize your campaigns.
Alternative Methods
Opt-in links and QR codes are two alternative options for building your subscriber list.
Opt-in links forward users to a landing page. This process is efficient and simple to set up, but limiting for marketers looking to collect subscriber data other than phone numbers.
QR codes are also a unique feature that not many SMS marketing tools have. Postscript allows you to export your QR code as a scalable SVG file.
Segmentation
Segmentation in Postscript is adequate, and more robust than tools like SimpleTexting. Postscript also has a comparable amount of segmentation options as SMSBump. However, SMSBump organizes them in a far more user-friendly way.
Segment Conditions
Segment conditions are the data points that you use to create segments. Postscript has a plethora of conditions based on customer activity for ecommerce businesses to segment.
| Category | Description | Segment Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Activity | This type of segment condition is based on contact behavior. |
|
| Contact Information | This type of segment condition is based on the attributes associated with each contact. |
|
| Demographic | Geographic segmentation is based on the location of your contact |
|
Specific operators included in Postscript’s application are:
- Equals or not equal to
- Includes or does not include
- Less than or equal to
- Greater than or equal to
- Before or after
- Within or before last
Postscript has a helpful amount of templated segments for ecommerce businesses. This is helpful for both new and experienced marketers.
Message Creation
Message creation in Postscript is simple. This makes it easy to create messages, however, it means it’s not possible to include much dynamic content with custom fields.
Custom Fields
Postscript has a limited amount of custom fields to choose from. This is rather limiting if you want highly personalized messages. Very few specific custom fields are available to you depending on whether you’re building campaigns or automations. Alternatives like SMSBump take this same approach, but counter it by offering a plethora of custom fields to choose from.
Custom fields can be used in both campaign building and automations. Here are some of the primary custom fields Postscript offers:
- First & Last Name
- Shop Name
- Store Link
- Abandoned Checkout URL
- Swell Point Balance
Campaign Building
After building your subscriber list, building campaigns is a crucial next step in SMS marketing. We found the primary issue with Postscript’s campaign building is that users can only create custom campaigns – Postscript does not come with prebuilt campaigns or a drip campaign builder. This limits your amount of creative opportunities to engage with your subscribers.
International Coverage
Postscript coverage is optimized primarily for the U.S. and Canada. Although there is a dedicated long code for international numbers, each SMS you send costs 10 credits.
Messages can be sent via short codes, toll-free phone numbers, or 10-digit long codes.
Custom Campaigns
Building a campaign in Postscript is similar to many other SMS marketing tools.
You can choose who to send your campaign to, add external media for MMS messages, and include custom tags such as discount or product links.
In addition to normal scheduling, Postscript supports “Safe Sending”. This enables an interval of 16 hours to ensure that there’s enough time between texts that you send to subscribers.
Two-Way Conversations
Postscript has an inbox where you can get in two-way conversations with subscribers. We found that the UI is far less detailed than alternative tools.
Unlike many other SMS marketing tools, there is no opportunity to see more details about your subscriber other than a number and customer ID. Valuable information like when subscribers have opted in to your list or the dates of previous messages they’ve sent are not available. This doesn’t provide you enough context about your subscribers, which hinders personalization.
Automations
Automations in SMS marketing are messages that are sent following a specific customer action, also known as triggers. Examples of triggers include:
- Checkout started
- Customer created
- Subscriber created
- Fulfillment created
- Order created
- Order in transit
- Order delivered
Automations are excellent in Postscript. They are easy to set up, detailed, and designed specifically for ecommerce businesses.
The best feature in Postscript’s automations are its triggers and segmentation. This allows for far more personalized automations and greater customer engagement.
As you can see above, automations are activated depending on the trigger that you choose. Where Postscript goes further is the ability to filter your triggers. Usually, these filters would have to be set separately in a segmentation tab. This is a powerful way to curb this workflow.
Postscript also provides a helpful list of templated automations.
Analytics
Analytics in ecommerce are extremely important to track your progress and sales. Postscript does not have comprehensive analytics for your business. Consider alternatives like SMSBump if this is important for your business.
Dashboard
The analytics dashboard feels incomplete for experienced marketers, and hard to navigate for new users.
The only visual graph, pictured above, is one that compares revenue and total sent messages.
Drill down capabilities are also limited. This means it’s tough to dig into your data and complete granular analyses. You can expand some sections in the bottom sheet but they are not comprehensive. Statistics like total spent, revenue sources, and ROI are very important for ecommerce businesses, and it’s unfortunate they are not available in Postscript.
Postscript Integrations
Postscript has a diverse selection of integrations, here are some of the most popular ones:
| Category | Integrations |
|---|---|
| Segmentation & Automations |
|
| List Building |
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| Support |
|
Postscript Customer Service
Postscript’s customer support team is very helpful. They are reachable through live chat and email. Live chat representatives respond within minutes with 24/7 availability.
Postscript has secondary material such as SMS marketing tips. The team also offers a course in SMS marketing, with a certificate granted upon completion.
| Customer Support Channels | Live chat, email |
| Other Support Resources | Free SMS marketing guides, certified SMS marketing course |
| Application Status Page | No |
Postscript Alternatives & Competitors
Postscript competes with a number of SMS marketing tools that either support all businesses or hone in on specific industries like ecommerce. They primarily compete with SMSBump. Here are some of their top competitors:
We've analyzed Postscript compared to its top competitor, SMSBump. Read this in-depth analyses that evaluate Postscript's cost, features and ease of use compared to alternatives:
Is Postscript Right For You?
Postscript is an affordable and powerful SMS marketing solution used by over 3,500 businesses. It includes essential features most SMS marketing tools have. Its strongest features are its automations and segmentations.
Postscript’s capable features alongside its fair pricing make it an optimal choice for Shopify store owners. If pricing is not a main concern for your business, and you’re looking for the best tool for ecommerce SMS marketers, we suggest SMSBump.
If you're interested, you can try Postscript today.