ZipWhip Review, Pricing & Features

What is ZipWhip?

ZipWhip is an SMS marketing platform currently used by over 40,000 businesses. It includes a majority of features most SMS marketing tools have, excluding segmentation. Overall, businesses looking for an SMS marketing solution built for business communications will find ZipWhip’s unlimited messages very helpful for non-personalized mass texting and two-way messaging.

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Table of Contents

• What is ZipWhip?
• ZipWhip Review Summary
• ZipWhip Pricing & Cost
• ZipWhip Features
  • Subscriber List Building
  • Message Creation
  • Campaign Building
  • Two-Way Conversations
  • Automated Messages
  • Analytics
• ZipWhip Integrations
• ZipWhip Customer Service
• ZipWhip Alternatives & Competitors
• Is ZipWhip Right For You?

ZipWhip Review Summary

ZipWhip was founded by John Lauer and John Larson in 2007. The company was one of the first solutions to enable texting on existing landlines. Today, the company serves over 40,000 customers and has around 250 employees working at its office in Seattle.

ZipWhip’s features are similar to most SMS marketing tools, excluding segmentation. Its strong points are its unlimited messages offered in all plans above $60. ZipWhip’s inbox is a standout feature as well. Still, SMS marketers who need advanced features such as segmentation and drip campaigns will find ZipWhip limiting.

ZipWhip’s pricing starts at $30 per month. ZipWhip is one of the most affordable SMS marketing solutions on the market today.

Overall, ZipWhip is an affordable SMS marketing solution ideal for businesses looking to leverage text marketing for non-personalized two-way communication or mass texting their existing subscriber base. Small businesses will find its inbox and unlimited messages very helpful for their needs.

ZipWhip Pricing & Cost

ZipWhip pricing starts at $30 per month. The Starter plan comes with 500 messages per month. All other plans have unlimited messages. Keywords are an additional $10 each.

ZipWhip Features

Let’s discuss the major features that ZipWhip offers and how they can help your SMS marketing and business goals. Product screenshots are included to add context and demonstrate the user interface.

Subscriber List Building

ZipWhip’s primary list builders are manual imports and opt-in keywords. This lack of list building options means your business has less available methods to capture subscribers and new customers effectively.

Manual Imports

You can manually import subscribers through .csv files. ZipWhip offers users a sample .csv file as a template. You can additionally choose to overwrite contacts that are already imported to prevent duplicates.

Opt-In Keywords

Opt-in keywords are phrases that customers text to become subscribers. They are one of the primary ways to build your SMS contact list. ZipWhip’s keywords are easy to set up but miss some critical features such as image attachments or being linked to a list.

Editing your keyword in ZipWhip is basic. The biggest limitation is that once subscribers opt-in through your keyword, they are not automatically added to any list. In fact, they cannot even be seen in your general contacts master list.

This is different from the standard and more user-friendly workflow of other SMS marketing tools such as SlickText.

Message Creation

Message creation in ZipWhip is adequate in features. You can send MMS messages, templates, and include custom fields. However, it’s not possible to create highly personalized messages in ZipWhip. This is because the platform offers very few opportunities to capture and store customer data.

ZipWhip’s inbox comes with the most messaging features available. There are no premade templates. You can also schedule your messages to be sent at certain times.

The standout feature of message creation is ZipWhip’s automated warning if you are utilizing a custom field that is not yet filled with data. This is a feature that is missing in other platforms and prevents you from sending misformatted messages.

Campaign Building

Campaign building is very basic in ZipWhip. You can only create mass texting campaigns. The lack of options such as drip campaigns is limiting for businesses who want to utilize more complex SMS marketing strategies. We still find that ZipWhip’ mass texting campaigns alongside its unlimited messaging can be very effective for marketers interested in non-personalized mass texting.

International Coverage

ZipWhip supports messaging in the U.S. and Canada. Messages are sent via text-enabled landline or VoIP numbers.

Mass Texting Campaigns

Building a mass texting campaign in ZipWhip is similar in setup to many other SMS marketing tools. You can choose your subscriber list, custom fields, and external media for MMS messages.

Scheduling options are also standard. If you choose to schedule your message for later, you have the option to include any subscribers who have opted-in after you’ve finalized your campaign.

Two-Way Conversations

ZipWhip’s inbox for two-way conversations is user-friendly and shows relevant subscriber information. This enables your business to easily facilitate one-on-one engagement with customers.

The inbox allows you to see your chat history with any subscriber. This gives your company additional context about customers. You can also change any custom field or list attributed to that subscriber.

If you are using a custom field that is not yet filled with data, ZipWhip’s inbox will warn you and highlight the exact field that must be filled in order to send a properly formatted message.

Automated Messages

Automated messages are messages triggered by specific events. The most common use cases of automated messages in SMS marketing include drip campaigns, and adding customers to different lists. In ZipWhip, you can also set up auto replies to be sent automatically.

The two main auto replies you have at your disposal are office hours and general auto replies. Both of these options have similar features. Office hours, as seen above, are linked to when your business is open.

An example use case for this would be setting up an auto reply for customers who need assistance outside of office hours, informing them of your customer service team’s weekly availability.

General auto replies can be leveraged more broadly. You have the ability to send your reply at all times, or only specific times of the week. Note that your customers will only receive one of these auto replies every 24 hours to prevent spam and conversation flows from being interrupted.

Analytics

Analytics in ZipWhip are basic. You can see reports for inbound, outbound, and total messages. You can also track reports about your keywords.

However, ZipWhip does not offer statistics based on your campaigns. Nor does it offer drill down opportunities to gain in-depth analysis on your performance. Furthermore, if ecommerce-specific statistics like ROI and revenue are important to your business, alternatives like Postscript or SMSBump are better for you.

The analytics dashboard is rather simple. You have two main reports with respective statistics for each.

As you can see, statistics are not robust. You can also see a breakdown of these statistics by day, week, and month. We also found that analytics took some time to load, as we didn’t see immediate reports update. You can also only export your keyword analytics and not your message reports.

ZipWhip Integrations

Many of ZipWhip’s integrations are handled through Zapier. There are however, a number of helpful native integrations available:

ZipWhip Customer Service

ZipWhip’s customer support team is helpful. They are reachable through text and phone. Hours are Monday through Friday, 6am to 5pm PST.

ZipWhip’s secondary material mainly consists of a blog with some free downloadable guides. Their standout piece of content is their annual report on the state of texting. This is a powerful resource for both new and experienced SMS marketers.

ZipWhip Alternatives & Competitors

ZipWhip competes with a number of SMS marketing tools that either support all businesses or home in on specific industries like ecommerce. Its features are most comparable to Textedly or TextMagic.

For a full breakdown, read our analysis of ZipWhip Competitors & Alternatives.

Is ZipWhip Right For You?

ZipWhip is an affordable SMS marketing solution currently used by over 40,000 businesses. It includes a majority of features most SMS marketing tools have, excluding segmentation and drip campaigns. Overall, businesses looking for an SMS marketing solution built for business communications will find ZipWhip’s unlimited messages very helpful for non-personalized mass texting and two-way messaging.

If you're interested, you can try ZipWhip today.