Cheapest is a clearer question here than in most categories, because nearly everyone bills per line per month and the numbers are directly comparable — where they are published at all.
| Option | Monthly | Sends outbound? | Real cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| BlueBubbles | $0 | Yes | A Mac, your uptime, your Apple ID at risk |
| Photon Free | $0 | Limited | Evaluation-grade; runs against your own Mac |
| Texting Blue Lite | $19 | Yes, up to 100/day | You supply the iPhone; your own number, no SMS fallback |
| Photon Pro | $25 | Limited | Dedicated lines and outreach are on the $250 tier |
| Blooio Shared | $39 | Yes | Shared line — deliverability affected by others on the pool |
| senderZ entry | $39 | Yes | Annual billing; meter counts new contacts, not messages |
| LoopMessage | ~$60 base | Yes | Add-ons reported to push it past $120 |
| Contiguity iMessage | $69.99 | Yes | Add-on on top of a leased number — the $0.005 rate is SMS |
| iBluSend Starter | $79 | Yes | You supply the Mac and the Apple Account |
| Crypton.sh Blue Relay | ~€89 | Yes | EU-hosted; no-KYC vendor positioning |
| Miss Blue Dedicated | $99 | Yes | Cheapest dedicated line published anywhere; RCS/SMS fallback included. Normally $198 |
| Sendblue AI Agent | $100 | No — reply-only | Outbound needs the enterprise quote |
| Blue Reacher annual | ~$162 | Yes | Prepaid year; pacing capped at ~45 new contacts/day |
| Blooio Dedicated | $289 | Yes | Isolation from other customers' behaviour |
$39 is still the answer for most people asking this
Texting Blue is cheaper on paper, but it asks you to supply and operate an iPhone. Blooio's shared plan remains the cheapest option where a vendor provisions the line, absorbs the Apple-side risk, and asks for no add-ons, no setup fee and no sales call. For a business sending appointment reminders, that is very likely still the correct purchase.
What you give up at each price point
- At $0 self-hosted: delivery receipts you can trust, uptime that is not your Mac, SMS fallback, and someone else absorbing account risk. Real losses, acceptable for internal tools.
- At $19–$79 bring-your-own-hardware: the same account risk as self-hosting, now with a subscription attached. You are buying software, not infrastructure.
- At $39 shared: line isolation. Another customer's sending behaviour can affect your deliverability. Fine until messaging becomes load-bearing.
- At $289 dedicated: nothing much — this is the comfortable tier for a business that depends on the channel.
- Above that: you are paying for compliance artefacts, enterprise support or outbound volume, not for better message delivery.
The cheap tier that is not what it looks like
Three of the lowest prices in the table buy you something structurally different from the others, and the price list does not make that obvious.
The vendor operates the line
- Blooio, Miss Blue, LoopMessage, senderZ, Crypton.sh
- They provision the number and the Apple-side infrastructure
- They absorb lockout and account risk
- You call an API and nothing else is yours to run
You operate the line
- Texting Blue ($19), iBluSend ($79), BlueBubbles (free)
- You supply an iPhone or a Mac and keep it online
- Your Apple Account carries the terms-of-service exposure
- The subscription buys software and a dashboard, not infrastructure
Contiguity is the most misquoted price in the category
Contiguity gets recommended as costing half a cent per iMessage. That $0.005 figure is its SMS rate. iMessage is a separate $69.99/month capability added to a leased number, which puts it mid-field rather than at the bottom. The breakdown is here.
senderZ is the other one worth reading twice. Its $39 entry plan is metered on unique new contacts rather than messages or lines, so the same plan can be the cheapest or the most expensive option here depending entirely on your list — worked through here.
The cost calculation people get backwards
Coming from SMS, per-line pricing looks expensive. It inverts as volume grows: iMessage gets cheaper per message the more you send, because the line is the cost and the messages are close to free.
- Per message at 200/mo on a $39 line
- 20¢Per message at 200/mo on a $39 line
- At 1,000/mo
- 4¢At 1,000/mo
- At 10,000/mo
- 0.4¢At 10,000/mo
- At 20,000/mo
- 0.2¢At 20,000/mo
So the honest framing is not 'is $39 cheap' but 'do I send enough for the line to pay for itself'. For most appointment businesses, one or two recovered no-shows a month covers it — iMessage vs SMS cost has the full comparison.
Common questions
- What is the cheapest iMessage API?
- Texting Blue at $19/month per number is the cheapest published plan, though you supply the iPhone and it caps at 100 messages a day. Blooio and Miss Blue at $39/month are the cheapest plans where the vendor provisions the line. BlueBubbles is free but self-hosted.