First Review of Andrew Darius's TextResponse

TextResponse world’s first FREE text broadcast software.

I was very excited when I got the email (albeit a spam) about this product.

What it does is give you the ability to send bulk sms to people who sign up (or you can put in DB), using your phone and their interface.

We all know that people are connected to their phone so this product should be awesome.

I know a bit about sms as we started to develop a site textzinger.com using twilio as backend provider.

So the pros of TextResponse is that you can send out unlimited sms, divided into lists, for no SMS charge if you have a unlimited sms plan on your Android phone.

The concept is awesome.

However this software and the company has many issues. They are the folks who brought out explaindio and a new push messages via a browser.


First the company.
1. Support is very slow. There are also unanswered complaints in their forum how bad it is.

2. Unfulfilled promises- The spam promo email promised a $10 off coupon, to which they made excuses why they didn't honor, then begrudgely made a new offer not in line with what they offered.

3. Their Facebook support group is another story. They let me in before I bought the product, and I voiced legitimate issues with their process, so they kicked me out. I can understand that since I was not a customer. Not sure how I got in in the first place. However, the proper way would be to say.. Hey we are sorry, but this group is for registered owners. Didn't happen.

I would rate this part a 1 star.

The Product

1. I did buy it as soon as it came available. One of the complaints in the Facebook forum was the constant upsale funnel. So be it, thats the way it works. Some people did not see the unlimited version after they bought as well.
2. The product comes in at least 4 variations of how many people you can send to. I opted for the 25k users @ $197. After that they have an upsale to unlimited for $97 more. They have the cheapest version @$47 for 3k users. All this is lifetime one fee. That is good.
3. The software to access the UI to send sms is via their website.
4. Excited to start, I watched the videos which are good for simple stuff and created my first SMS.

So far so good! ( So I thought)


However, it is all downhill from here.

1. As stated support is awful. Waiting 3 days to get answers. When they do answer, the answers are incomplete. They do not take the time to read the issue, and you need to rewrite to them and wait again.

2. The product really does not work. They have a UI that allows for people to subscribe to a list on the web. It simply does not work. Does not work on Mac Safari at all. Blank screen or other issues. And on other browsers the UI throws an error when inputing a phone number to subscribe. You need to add + before the phone number. It doesn't say anywhere to do that. Who would think you need to do that? No one. Anyways even after adding the +5615551212, no SMS confirmation is sent. The only thing that does work is I am able send a text from the UI, but there is no clear way to send to a group.. Like Joes Pizza.

3. A user can not unsubscribe. You can not send to lists even though you can create a url to join a list. The user does not get subscribed to that list. User can not join a list via phone subscribe. A success message is not sent upon a phone subscribe. This is just the beginning.

4. I can not access the FB group and they have kicked me out when I went through other accounts. I asked to be let back in since I am a paying customer, but no. That is totally bad CS. This is a major sore spot with this company.

5. The videos do not do a thorough job of explaining all the details of how to use the software. You would think since they are known as a video company, this would shine. It doesn't.

6. This product was rushed to put public with a whole list of bugs. You have people SELLING this all over. Either they just want to make a fast buck, give a baloney story in their youtube videos, or never tried it.

Bottom line. The concept is a great idea and I am sure they will work out the bugs. But even after they work out the bugs, they still have other issues as outlined above.

Undoubtebly you may see this product posted here as a WSO as some of their other products are. Perhaps it is not here now, is because it does not work very good at all.

I rate this product as a Do NOT BUY, for now.

Once they fix the bugs, and if you do buy, you will have to deal with sub par customer service which is really bad.

Here is a very recent thread from their support forum complaining about their support. Notice how there is not one reply from the company addressing complaints..