Does Kickserv charge extra per text message?

The published pricing page does not list a per-message rate. It lists automated email and text reminders as an included feature of the Start plan at $60 a month for 5 users, and the Run and Scale plans sit above that. Because no per-message or per-segment price appears on the page, the only SMS cost that can be verified is the plan fee itself. Treat any per-text figure you see quoted elsewhere as unverified until Kickserv publishes it.

How much is Kickserv per user per month?

Divide the plan fee by the seats it includes. Start is $60 a month for 5 users, so $12.00 per seat. Run is $119 for 10 users, so $11.90 per seat. Scale is $199 for 20 users, so $9.95 per seat. Those are ceiling-seat figures. A two-person cleaning crew on Start pays $30.00 per working seat, because the plan fee does not shrink when you use fewer seats.

What is the cheapest Kickserv plan for a two-person cleaning business?

Start, at $60 a month, is the lowest published monthly price. It includes 5 users, automated email and text reminders, time tracking, expense tracking, over 20 business reports, an embeddable contact form and QuickBooks Online accounting integration. A two-person operation pays the full $60 and leaves 3 seats unused. Annual billing is advertised as saving 20%, which works out to $48 a month equivalent, or $576 a year.

How does the Kickserv Kickback discount work?

Kickback gives 5% off the monthly fee when you process a minimum amount in online payments that month. The minimum is $1,000 on Start, $2,000 on Run and $3,000 on Scale. On annual plans the monthly minimum is multiplied by 12. In dollar terms the discount is $3.00 a month on Start, $5.95 on Run and $9.95 on Scale, so $36.00, $71.40 and $119.40 a year respectively.

Is Kickserv annual billing worth it for a cleaning company?

The page advertises 20% off for annual subscription. On Start that is $12.00 a month saved, $144 a year. On Run, $23.80 a month, $285.60 a year. On Scale, $39.80 a month, $477.60 a year. The trade-off is that annual Kickback requires the monthly processing minimum multiplied by 12, so $12,000 of online payments on Start rather than $1,000 in a single month.

Kickserv SMS Costs for Cleaning Businesses

Kickserv does not publish a per-text price. Text reminders are bundled into the plan fee, and the fee is what you can actually verify: $60 a month for 5 users on Start, $119 for 10 on Run, $199 for 20 on Scale. So “SMS cost” for a cleaning business is a per-seat and per-job arithmetic problem, not a per-message one.

Key points

Kickserv lists automated email and text reminders as an included Start-plan feature at $60 a month for 5 users, and publishes no per-message or per-segment charge anywhere on its pricing page.
Per included seat, Start is $12.00, Run is $11.90 and Scale is $9.95, so the seat price only falls by $2.05 across a fourfold jump in seat count.
A two-cleaner crew on Start pays $30.00 per working seat, two and a half times the headline per-seat rate, because the plan fee does not shrink below 5 users.
The Kickback discount is 5% off the monthly fee and needs $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000 of monthly online payment volume on Start, Run and Scale, worth $3.00, $5.95 and $9.95 a month.
At 120 jobs a month with two reminders each, Start works out at $0.25 per reminder sent; at 400 jobs a month that falls to $0.075.

Person in full protective suit cleaning a floor, showcasing safety measures.

What does Kickserv actually charge, and what is bundled?

Three published monthly plans, each with a seat ceiling. Here is what the pricing page states, with nothing added.

Side view of crop anonymous male worker in gumboots with brush priming cement floor at work

Plan	Included users	Monthly price	Annual saving advertised	Annual-equivalent monthly	Annual total
Start	5	$60	20%	$48.00	$576.00
Run	10	$119	20%	$95.20	$1,142.40
Scale	20	$199	20%	$159.20	$1,910.40

Working, line by line, for the annual column:

Start: $60 × 0.80 = $48.00 a month. $48.00 × 12 = $576.00. Saving $144.00 a year.
Run: $119 × 0.80 = $95.20 a month. $95.20 × 12 = $1,142.40. Saving $285.60 a year.
Scale: $199 × 0.80 = $159.20 a month. $159.20 × 12 = $1,910.40. Saving $477.60 a year.

Features listed against Start on the page: embeddable contact form, automated email and text reminders, over 20 business reports, time tracking, expense tracking, and QuickBooks Online accounting integration. A 30-day free trial is advertised on Start and Run. The page also references a Premium tier in its Kickback description without listing a Premium price.

Assumptions used throughout this article, stated up front because they are what moves the numbers:

Text reminders are covered by the plan fee, because the page lists them as a plan feature and lists no separate messaging rate.
Seat ceilings are hard ceilings, so a crew of 6 cannot sit on Start.
Reminder volume scales with jobs, not with customers, because reminders are tied to appointments.
Two reminders per job is the base case for cleaning: one booking confirmation, one day-before.

What does a text reminder cost per job on each plan?

Divide the plan fee by reminders sent. If messaging is bundled, the marginal text is free and the average text gets cheaper every time you send one, which is the number that matters for a recurring-clean business sending hundreds a month.

A bright yellow caution sign placed on a tile floor indicating a wet area for safety.

Base case, two reminders per job. Full sweep across the realistic monthly job range for a cleaning company:

Jobs/month	Reminders sent	Start $60	Run $119	Scale $199
20	40	$1.500	$2.975	$4.975
40	80	$0.750	$1.488	$2.488
60	120	$0.500	$0.992	$1.658
80	160	$0.375	$0.744	$1.244
100	200	$0.300	$0.595	$0.995
120	240	$0.250	$0.496	$0.829
160	320	$0.188	$0.372	$0.622
200	400	$0.150	$0.298	$0.498
260	520	$0.115	$0.229	$0.383
320	640	$0.188 → $0.094	$0.186	$0.311
400	800	$0.075	$0.149	$0.249
500	1,000	$0.060	$0.119	$0.199
650	1,300	$0.046	$0.092	$0.153

Working shown for two rows so the rest can be checked:

120 jobs, Start: 120 × 2 = 240 reminders. $60 ÷ 240 = $0.250 per reminder.
400 jobs, Scale: 400 × 2 = 800 reminders. $199 ÷ 800 = $0.24875, rounds to $0.249.

Read the row that matches your job count, not the plan you like the look of. A 60-job-a-month two-person residential cleaner on Start is paying 50 cents per reminder. The same business at 200 jobs pays 15 cents. The software price never changed.

How does the cost move when crew size and reminder frequency both change?

Two axes: number of cleaners needing a login, and reminders per job. Crew size forces the plan; reminder frequency divides the fee.

Plan forced by seat count, using published ceilings of 5, 10 and 20:

Cleaners with logins	Forced plan	Monthly fee	Fee per working seat
1	Start	$60	$60.00
2	Start	$60	$30.00
3	Start	$60	$20.00
4	Start	$60	$15.00
5	Start	$60	$12.00
6	Run	$119	$19.83
8	Run	$119	$14.88
10	Run	$119	$11.90
11	Scale	$199	$18.09
14	Scale	$199	$14.21
20	Scale	$199	$9.95

Note the two cliffs. Going from 5 cleaners to 6 raises your per-seat cost from $12.00 to $19.83, a 65% rise in unit cost for one extra login. Going from 10 to 11 takes it from $11.90 to $18.09, up 52%. Working: $119 ÷ 6 = $19.833; $199 ÷ 11 = $18.091.

Now the second axis. Cost per reminder at 100 jobs a month, varied by reminders per job:

Reminders per job	Total sent	Start $60	Run $119	Scale $199
1 (day-before only)	100	$0.600	$1.190	$1.990
2 (confirm + day-before)	200	$0.300	$0.595	$0.995
3 (+ on-the-way)	300	$0.200	$0.397	$0.663
4 (+ job complete)	400	$0.150	$0.298	$0.498
5 (+ review request)	500	$0.120	$0.238	$0.398
6 (+ rebooking nudge)	600	$0.100	$0.198	$0.332

Because no per-message charge is published, turning reminders up does not raise the bill. It lowers the average cost of each one. That is the opposite of how a metered messaging product behaves, and it is the single most important consequence of the bundling that Kickserv’s page describes.

How much does Kickback actually take off, and what volume do you need?

Kickback is 5% off the monthly fee, gated on a minimum monthly online payment volume. The pricing page states the minimums as $1,000 on Start, $2,000 on Run and $3,000 on Scale, with the annual version multiplying the monthly minimum by 12.

Reverse calculation. What do you need to process, and what is the discount worth?

Plan	Fee	5% discount	Fee after Kickback	Monthly minimum volume	Annual minimum volume	Discount as % of volume	Annual discount value
Start	$60	$3.00	$57.00	$1,000	$12,000	0.30%	$36.00
Run	$119	$5.95	$113.05	$2,000	$24,000	0.30%	$71.40
Scale	$199	$9.95	$189.05	$3,000	$36,000	0.33%	$119.40

Working: $60 × 0.05 = $3.00, $60 − $3.00 = $57.00, $3.00 ÷ $1,000 = 0.30%. $199 × 0.05 = $9.95, $9.95 ÷ $3,000 = 0.3317%.

Reverse question, for a cleaner deciding whether to push customers onto card payment: how many jobs must be paid online to clear the threshold? At an average residential clean of $150, Start needs $1,000 ÷ $150 = 6.67, so 7 jobs paid by card in the month. Run needs $2,000 ÷ $150 = 13.34, so 14 jobs. Scale needs 20 jobs. At a $400 average deep clean or commercial visit, Start needs 3 jobs, Run needs 5, Scale needs 8.

Full sweep of jobs needed to qualify, by average ticket:

Average job value	Start ($1,000)	Run ($2,000)	Scale ($3,000)
$80	13 jobs	25 jobs	38 jobs
$120	9 jobs	17 jobs	25 jobs
$150	7 jobs	14 jobs	20 jobs
$200	5 jobs	10 jobs	15 jobs
$300	4 jobs	7 jobs	10 jobs
$400	3 jobs	5 jobs	8 jobs
$600	2 jobs	4 jobs	5 jobs

Rounded up, since a part-job does not count. One caution: the 5% is 5% of the software fee, not of anything else, and the page does not publish the payment processing rate applied to that volume. A processing rate of even 2.5% on $1,000 is $25, against a $3.00 discount. Do not route payments through a processor purely to chase Kickback without knowing the processing rate, which this page does not state.

Two things people get wrong about this

Misconception one: a bigger plan lowers your per-seat cost, so growing into Run or Scale saves money. It does, but far less than the plan structure implies, and not at all at the boundaries. Across a fourfold seat increase from 5 to 20, the per-seat price falls from $12.00 to $9.95. That is 17% off unit cost for 4× the seats and 232% more total spend ($60 to $199). The plan you should be on is the smallest one whose ceiling clears your login count, and the worst possible position is one seat over a ceiling: $119 for 6 people, $199 for 11.

Misconception two: sending more texts means a bigger bill, so you should ration reminders. On the published Kickserv feature list, text reminders are a plan inclusion with no per-message price attached. Under that structure, going from 2 reminders per job to 5 at 100 jobs a month takes your cost per reminder from $0.300 to $0.120, a 60% drop, while the invoice stays at $60. If reducing no-shows is worth anything at all, rationing reminders costs you money without saving any. The caveat is real though: if Kickserv applies a fair-use cap or a carrier pass-through fee, it is not stated on the page, so a very high-volume sender should confirm before designing a 6-touch sequence.

Year-on-year: what changed and what we can compare

The page as scraped on 2026-09-28 is the only version of Kickserv pricing verified here. It carries a ©2023 footer, which tells you nothing reliable about when the prices were last changed. No historical price is published on the page, so a genuine year-over-year price comparison cannot be built from this source.

What can be computed is the year-over-year effect of the two published discounts stacking, which is the closest thing to a multi-year figure the source supports:

Plan	List annual (12 × monthly)	Annual billing at 20% off	Monthly + Kickback 5%	Gap between best and worst
Start	$720.00	$576.00	$684.00	$144.00
Run	$1,428.00	$1,142.40	$1,356.60	$285.60
Scale	$2,388.00	$1,910.40	$2,268.60	$477.60

Working: Start list, $60 × 12 = $720.00. Annual, $576.00 as above. Monthly with Kickback every month, $57.00 × 12 = $684.00. Annual billing beats monthly-plus-Kickback by $108.00 a year on Start.

Whether annual billing and Kickback combine is not stated on the page. If they do, annual Start would be $576.00 × 0.95 = $547.20, a further $28.80 off. Treat that as unconfirmed.

When these figures will be wrong

If Kickserv bills messaging separately. The page lists text reminders as a feature and gives no rate. If there is a per-segment charge, a metered allowance, or a carrier surcharge disclosed at signup, every cost-per-reminder figure above is a floor, not a total.
If reminders count segments, not messages. A message over the standard segment length counts as more than one on most carrier billing. If Kickserv passes that through, a wordy reminder template costs more than a short one, and the reminder counts in the tables understate usage.
If your seat count is seasonal. Cleaning businesses add cleaners for spring and move-out season. A 5-seat business that hits 7 seats for three months pays $119 × 3 + $60 × 9 = $897 a year rather than $720, unless plan changes mid-term are restricted, which the page does not address.
If you bill annually and then shrink. Annual billing at 20% off assumes you keep the seats for 12 months. The page does not state refund or downgrade terms.
If you need the Run or Scale feature set rather than the seats. The scraped Run entry is truncated on the page, showing only a fragment reading “$50/m)”. Its full feature list could not be read, so a business choosing Run for features rather than seat count cannot size the decision from this source.
If Kickback needs consecutive qualifying months. The tables assume every month clears the minimum. A seasonal cleaner with a slow January loses that month’s discount, and the annual figures overstate the saving by $3.00 to $9.95 per missed month.

What could not be verified

No per-text, per-message or per-segment SMS price appears anywhere on the Kickserv pricing page. Kickserv does not publish an SMS rate we could verify, so none is quoted here.
No payment processing rate or per-transaction fee is published on the page, despite Kickback being based on processing volume.
The Run plan’s feature list is truncated in the source, reading “10 users $119 /mo … $50/m)”. What the “$50/m)” fragment refers to cannot be determined, so it is not used in any calculation.
A Premium plan is named in the Kickback section with a 5% discount but no price and no seat count is published for it.
Whether the 20% annual discount and the 5% Kickback discount stack is not stated.
No overage price for exceeding a seat ceiling is published, so the assumption that you must move up a plan is an inference from the stated seat counts.
No setup fee, onboarding fee or minimum term is published.

This site does not use Kickserv. Everything above is arithmetic on the vendor’s own published figures.

What to check before you buy

Ask for the SMS terms in writing. Specifically: is there a monthly message allowance, a per-segment charge, or a carrier pass-through fee? The pricing page does not answer this, and it is the one number that could change every table above.
Count your logins, then look at the ceiling above you. If you are at 5 or 10, one hire moves you to $119 or $199. Budget the cliff, not the current fee.
Get the payment processing rate before chasing Kickback. A 5% discount on a $60 fee is $3.00. Processing $1,000 at an unfavourable rate can cost multiples of that.
Confirm whether annual and Kickback stack, and what happens to the annual discount if you downgrade seats mid-term.
Use the 30-day free trial advertised on Start and Run to count how many reminders your job volume actually generates in a real month, then check your own row in the tables above.
Check the QuickBooks integration scope. The page lists QuickBooks Online under Start and names QuickBooks Desktop among integrations elsewhere on kickserv.com. Confirm which your bookkeeper uses.