TextMagic is there when others aren't

It was August 28th, 2017. Hurricane Harvey had landed in Houston and was causing a record amount of flooding. People were dying, and thousands were still trapped in their homes. I made a simple website for my buddy's church, so his friends could keep track of all of the parishoners that needed rescue. The website quickly went viral however, and soon the entire city was using it as a way to track the rescue cases. Rains continued to pound Houston, and what started as a simple website that I made in 6 hours now was literally the only thing standing in the way of death for thousands of people still trapped by the rising floodwaters. We had a problem, though. Some of the people were getting rescued but not being marked "SAFE" on the site. This resulted in wasted resources, as rescuers would would go to a house and find nobody there, the homeowner having already been rescued hours earlier. We had to come up with a solution to this problem. Luckily, we had all of their phone numbers, so we decided to text them all. It was 2 AM in Texas, and I needed to have it done overnight because we were expecting more waves of signups in the morning. I tried Twilio but nobody answered the phone or replied to my urgent messages. Luckily, TextMagic picked up the phone and I got a working account in minutes. We sent out thousands of SMS overnight. TextMagic was there when others weren't. We ended up saving 25,000 people that week, a number which would have been smaller if not for TextMagic.

Pros

The customer service is excellent. I don't recall the woman's name, but it was the best customer service I have ever received for any product, in a literal life or death situation.

Cons

I couldn't tell at first glance, by looking at the website, if it was ready for enterprise solutions or not

Necessary & Unnecessary features

Not getting notifications that a message wasn't delivered is a detriment to Text Magic and my ability to do my job effectively. Our text message program with our customer base is pivotal to success within my company so it's vital to know if messages are reaching my customers.

Pros

Ease of setting up and using templates!!

Cons

Unnecessary feature - The email notifications that someone unsubscribed to your messages. If I get a text that says "STOP" from the person sending it, then I don't need an email telling me that they sent a message saying STOP. It's redundant & unnecessary. Necessary/needed feature - You really need to develop an email notification when a text message is undelivered. I've sent several messages that were undelivered and I only discovered that they weren't delivered when I checked my history for a completely different message.

Positive Review

Very positive - means we can send out last minute texts

Pros

Text magic is one of its kind- there are lots of email softwares out there but text ones are hard to come by. It stores all your contacts and sends them text messages whenever you want. It’s great for the price.

Cons

However I do find that it feels slightly intrusive - sending texts feel more relaxed and less formal but sometimes is formal. I do find i don’t use it as much as mailchimp however it’s good for emergency use ie when we cancel a class as customers most likely to look at their phone for a text then for an email

Help for contacting Employee's

Communication to our employees is very important and with them not in the office, we needed a conduit from our office, directly to them, for fast messages to get out to all. We are overall pleased with this program and will enjoy every new update they make in the future as it can only get better.

Pros

We started using the software as the need to get in touch with our truck drivers is paramount in our industry. This is a great way to do this in theory. I like the ease of use and options to organize the driver phone number list. It gets the messages out to them. I had a minor set up problem when we first started and discovered the number I picked on the list did not work and my messages were not going out to all employees. Customer service chat was very helpful and they reimbursed the amount in our account for the charges and corrected the phone number issue I had.

Cons

As with any program, maintaining the information in it is most important. If we do not keep the contacts current, mass texting may go out to contacts who are no longer with the company. And your information will not go out to everybody who needs it if they are not entered in when first hired. We have a high turnover rate so it is another list we have to take care of. Currently Text Magic will only allow for one administrator to control all lists and manage. My company has need for more than just one administrator. So we share one log in right now. The last minor issue we have is the option for our employees to opt out of the texts. It hasn't happened but only once but it does and will again, sooner or later.

Great for the price with no contractual obligations

Wanted a way to keep in touch with staff on a daily basis during the pandemic and this worked perfectly using the survey option for daily availability options. May not be what it was designed for but works perfectly. Definitely a tool we will keep using long after this crisis is over to keep in touch with staff and for surveys.

Pros

Easy to set up and start using both as a straight SMS service and as a survey for daily availability options.

Cons

Main downside was the inability to set up recurring surveys - would have been even easier if we could have scheduled the survey to run for multiple days.