What does Walla charge for SMS vs Junocal?

"How much is SMS?" is one of those questions that should have a one-line answer and usually doesn't. For studios comparing Junocal and Walla, it matters more than it looks, because SMS is what makes a late-opening waitlist actually fill — and because it's one of the cleanest tests of how transparent a platform's pricing really is. Here's the verified version, with the numbers I can stand behind and an honest note where a number isn't public.

SMS is a paid add-on on both platforms — that part is the same

Start with the thing nobody likes to say plainly: neither Junocal nor Walla gives you unlimited SMS for free. Text messages cost real money to send — carriers charge per message, routed through a provider like Twilio — so any platform offering "free unlimited SMS" is either burying the cost in a higher subscription or quietly rate-limiting you.

On Junocal, the included automation is email: the 24-hour reminder, welcome, win-back, renewal nudge and failed-payment recovery all send by email on every plan at no extra cost. SMS is a separate, optional package. On Walla, two-way SMS sits in the add-on stack alongside the branded app and the Pro website — again, an add-on, not a base inclusion.

So the real question isn't "free or paid." It's paid on both. The question is how much, and can you find out without a sales call.

What Junocal charges, on the page

Junocal's SMS package is published and flat:

• $20 / £15 per month for 500 messages — about $0.04 per message
• $58 / £45 per month for 2,000 messages — about $0.029 per message

Delivery runs through Twilio, configured automatically at signup so you don't manage it yourself. The package is month-to-month like the rest of the plan, and you only buy it if you want texts. If you run a busy waitlist, the 2,000-message tier is usually the right call; for a smaller studio, 500 covers the late-opening alerts and disruption notices comfortably.

That's the whole answer for the Junocal side — no tiers to decode, no "contact us."

What Walla charges — and the honest limit on that answer

Walla offers two-way SMS as a paid add-on. Beyond that, I won't invent a number. Walla's pricing is quote-based: the base plan, the branded-booking add-on, and the rest of the add-on stack are priced in a proposal rather than published on a rate card, so there is no public per-message or per-month SMS figure to quote accurately.

What you can say with confidence: it's an add-on, not a base-plan inclusion, and it follows Walla's standard commercial model — which means it's likely tied to the same annual terms as the base subscription. If SMS cost matters to your decision, the move is to ask Walla two specific questions: the monthly price and the included message volume, and whether the add-on is annual. Convert their answer to a per-message figure and put it next to Junocal's $0.04 / $0.029.

I'd rather tell you "ask them" than print a made-up price next to a real one.

Why SMS is worth getting right

It's tempting to treat SMS as a minor line item. For a class-based studio it isn't, because of one feature: the first-to-claim waitlist. When a client cancels late — inside the cancellation window — Junocal alerts every waitlist member at once with a one-tap claim link, and the first to tap gets the spot. That flow converts at roughly 70–80%, and it only works over SMS; email open rates inside a 12-hour window are too low to fill the seat in time. The same channel carries pick-a-spot disruption alerts when a reformer goes out of service and a client has to be moved.

So "what does SMS cost" is really "what does it cost to fill late-opening spots automatically." On that framing, a few pence per message that recovers an otherwise-empty £18 reformer spot pays for itself many times over — on either platform. The deciding factor is rarely the per-message rate; it's whether you can see the rate, and whether it's locked to an annual contract.

The bottom line

Both platforms charge for SMS. Junocal publishes a flat, month-to-month package — $20/£15 for 500, $58/£45 for 2,000 — so you know the number before you commit. Walla's two-way SMS is a paid add-on inside a quote-based stack, so the number comes from a proposal, likely on annual terms. If pricing transparency is one of the reasons you're looking past Walla in the first place, SMS is a small but representative example of the difference.

For the full picture, see the Walla alternative page, the SMS-inclusive waitlist feature, or how Junocal's automation works. If you want help mapping your current SMS spend onto either model, hello@junocal.com gets a real reply.