SMS reaches any phone with consent and gets read almost every time, but every message costs money and marketing texts need prior express written consent. Push notifications cost little or nothing per message, but only reach people who installed your app or allowed browser notifications, and get opened less. Use SMS for urgent, high-value messages and push for frequent ones.
The question is rarely SMS or push. It is which messages belong on which channel, because sending the wrong message on SMS costs money and subscribers, and sending the right message on push may never be seen.
The cost per message
SMS has a hard cost on every send. Twilio's US rate is $0.0083 per message segment plus carrier fees of $0.0035 (AT&T) to $0.005 (Verizon) per segment (Twilio pricing, October 2026). Ecommerce platforms bundle this differently: Postscript charges $0.007 to $0.009 per SMS by plan, plus average US carrier fees of about $0.0044 (Postscript pricing), while Klaviyo says carrier fees are included in its rates (Klaviyo, updated 20 October 2026). A message over 160 standard characters is billed as more than one segment (Twilio).
Push is close to free per message. Klaviyo states that unlimited mobile push notifications are included with every plan, for brands with their own app (Klaviyo mobile push). OneSignal's Growth plan bills web push at $0.004 per subscriber per month and mobile push at $0.012 per monthly active user, with no per-send fee (OneSignal pricing).
What that looks like at scale
On Twilio's published rates, one SMS segment costs about 1.2 to 1.3 cents once the carrier fee is added. Four single-segment campaigns a month to 50,000 subscribers is 200,000 segments, or roughly $2,360 to $2,660 a month before any flows. The same 50,000 people as web push subscribers on OneSignal Growth cost about $200 a month, however many notifications you send. That gap is why the channel choice should be made message by message, not once for the whole program.
Reach and opt-in
SMS reaches anyone who gives you a number and consent, on any phone, with no app. Push needs either an app the customer installed or a browser that granted permission. On iPhone, web push only works for sites added to the Home Screen, a capability Apple added in iOS 16.4 (WebKit).
Among app users, push permission is far from universal. Airship's 2026 benchmarks put median opt-in at 53.3% on Android and 48.85% on iOS (Airship).
Opens and clicks
Channel
Open rate
Click rate
SMS
90% to 98%
10% to 30%
Web push
5% to 12% direct open
not given
App push
4% to 6% direct open
not given
Source: Emarsys, 13 March 2026, which labels these directional ranges. The gap is the whole argument: SMS gets read, push gets glanced at. Relevance closes some of it. Batch, a push platform, found contextual pushes were opened at 14.4% against 4.19% for generic ones, in data from July 2024 to July 2025 (Batch).
Consent
For SMS, the FCC's TCPA rules require prior express written consent before sending autodialed marketing messages to mobile numbers (47 CFR 64.1200), which is why your sign-up form needs clear disclosure language. For push, the operating system or browser asks for permission and the customer taps allow. Push carries no comparable legal paperwork, but a customer who turns notifications off rarely turns them back on.
How we split messages between the two
As an SMS marketing agency, our rule is simple: SMS for messages worth paying for, push for messages worth having.
Send on SMS: product drops and restocks with limited stock, abandoned checkout for high-value carts, the last hours of a sale, and VIP early access.
Send on push: back-in-stock for lower-priced items, price drops, content and new arrivals, order and delivery updates inside your app, and browse reminders.
Never duplicate. If a message goes out on both, the customer pays attention to one and gets annoyed by the other. Pick the channel per message, and use frequency caps across both.
Two of our programs show the split at work. Darc Sport's SMS program, built around drops, grew to 41,000 subscribers within two months and earned $7.89 in SMS revenue per campaign message sent (Darc Sport case study). For Centr, a fitness app, we aligned email, push and in-app messaging, and the program delivered 2.5x higher engagement year over year in key sale periods (Centr case study). Drops needed the certainty of SMS; an app audience made push the cheaper daily channel.
If you are adding push, our push notification program and guide to web push notifications for ecommerce cover setup. Our SMS marketing best practices covers the other side.
Not sure which messages you are overpaying to send by text? Send us your last month of SMS campaigns and we will mark which ones should move to push.
