Texting statistics for businesses: what the data says

Texting is the channel most small businesses add first and think about least. This page collects the numbers that matter when you decide whether, when and how often to text leads and customers: how many people can receive a text, how much Americans text, what customers say they want from business texts, how fast they expect a reply and what makes them opt out.

How we built this list: we only include figures we could trace to the original source, and each one links to it. Government and independent research (Pew Research Center, Gallup, CTIA, the FTC) comes first. Surveys run by texting vendors are labeled as vendor research, because the companies publishing them sell texting software. Last checked October 2026.

Phones and reach

Before anything else, the basic question: can your customers receive a text? Almost all of them can.

• 98% of US adults own a cellphone and 91% own a smartphone — Pew Research Center (2026, n=5,511 US adults, surveyed Jan. 30–June 18, 2026)
• 79% of adults 65 and older own a smartphone, compared with 97% of adults ages 18–49 — Pew Research Center (2026, n=5,511)
• 16% of US adults are “smartphone dependent”: they own a smartphone but have no home broadband — Pew Research Center (2026, n=5,511)
• The US had nearly 603 million wireless connections in 2025, roughly 1.8 per person — CTIA 2026 Annual Survey Highlights (2026, industry survey of wireless providers)

What this means for your team: a mobile number is the one contact detail nearly every lead has, including older homeowners who may never open your emails. For the roughly one in six adults without home broadband, the phone is the internet, so a text with a short link to a quote or booking page reaches them where a long email might not. Make the mobile number a required field on your lead capture forms, and capture texting consent at the same moment.

How much Americans text

Texting volume has not faded with the rise of chat apps. The newest CTIA highlights focus on data use, so the most recent message count comes from the 2025 survey.

• Americans exchanged nearly 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages in 2024, 42 billion more than the year before — CTIA (2025, annual wireless industry survey covering 2024)
• In the same year, Americans spent more than 2.4 trillion minutes on voice calls — CTIA (2025, covering 2024)
• 97% of smartphone owners used text messaging at least once during a one-week study, more than any other phone feature Pew tracked — Pew Research Center (2015, data from Nov. 2014, n=1,635 smartphone owners; an older study, but the most detailed of its kind)
• More than two-thirds of adults ages 18–29, and nearly half of adults ages 30–49, said they sent and received text messages “a lot” the previous day — Gallup (2014, n=1,015 US adults; now more than a decade old)

What this means for your team: texting is a daily habit across age groups, and calls haven’t gone away either. The practical question isn’t “text or call?” but “which one first, for which kind of lead?” We cover that in texting vs calling new leads. In short: a text is a low-pressure way to confirm you got the request, and a call works better for anything that needs a conversation.

Do customers want business texts?

Here we rely on surveys by texting vendors. The numbers are consistent across companies, but remember who paid for them.

• 86% of consumers are opted in to receive texts from at least one business — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000 US consumers, fielded Jan. 7–8, 2026)
• 89% of consumers have signed up for business texts, up from 66% in 2021 — EZ Texting (vendor survey, 2026, n=959 US consumers)
• 76% of consumers want appointment or reservation reminders by text, 61% want shipping or order updates and 59% want promotions — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000)
• 64% of consumers want to be able to text a business back — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000)
• For customer questions, 33% prefer texting, 28% email, 21% website chat and 18% phone calls — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000)
• When they reach out to a business “always or most of the time,” 55% use email, 46% text and 43% phone — EZ Texting (vendor survey, 2026, n=959)
• Only 8% of respondents named SMS as the channel they ignore most, compared with 42% for phone calls — Textmagic and Pollfish (vendor survey, 2025, n=1,800 US adults, March 2025)

What this means for your team: customers welcome useful texts (reminders, confirmations, “your quote is ready”) far more than promotions, and they expect texting to be two-way. A one-way blast number that ignores replies wastes the main thing people like about the channel. Route replies into the same thread as calls and emails so whoever picks up the conversation sees the history; that’s what the unified inbox in Exa is for.

Speed and reply expectations

People read texts fast and expect the same back.

• 74% of consumers check text notifications within five minutes, and 23% within one minute — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000)
• 87% check a new text within 15 minutes — EZ Texting (vendor survey, 2026, n=959)
• 70% expect a business to reply to their text within one hour — EZ Texting (vendor survey, 2026, n=959)
• 30% say they texted a business and got no response, and another 23% say a business “ghosted” them by text — Textmagic and Pollfish (vendor survey, 2025, n=1,800 US adults)

What this means for your team: if you publish a textable number, someone has to own the replies. Set a one-hour reply target during business hours and assign inbound conversations so they don’t sit in a shared phone. For after-hours texts, a short automatic acknowledgment (“Thanks, we’ll reply first thing tomorrow”) is better than silence. For the wider research on reply speed, see our lead response time statistics.

What makes people opt out

The fastest way to lose a texting audience is to send too much.

• 55% of consumers name messaging too frequently as their top reason to opt out, ahead of spam-like content (21%) and irrelevant messages (13%) — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000)
• 40% cite too-frequent texts, 18% irrelevant content and 10% bad timing — EZ Texting (vendor survey, 2026, n=959)
• 50% prefer business texts about once every other week and 37% about once a week — SimpleTexting (vendor survey, 2026, n=1,000)
• Nearly 70% have blocked a business number, and 48% have done so more than once — Textmagic and Pollfish (vendor survey, 2025, n=1,800 US adults)

What this means for your team: frequency is the setting that matters most. Keep marketing texts rare, make every message about the recipient’s job or appointment, and respect quiet hours in the recipient’s time zone. In Exa, consent is stored per channel, STOP and START replies update it automatically, and messages that would land during quiet hours wait until morning. Our guide to SMS consent management covers the basics (general information, not legal advice).

Trust, scams and spam

Every business text now competes with scam texts. That affects how yours are read.

• 61% of US adults say they get scam text messages at least weekly, and 20% get them daily — Pew Research Center (2025, n=9,397 US adults, April 14–20, 2025)
• People reported losing $470 million to scams that started with a text in 2024, more than five times the 2020 figure — Federal Trade Commission (2025, based on reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network)
• 48% say suspicious links and 47% say an unknown sender number are red flags in a business text — Textmagic and Pollfish (vendor survey, 2025, n=1,800 US adults)
• 39% have ignored a business text because they weren’t sure it was legitimate — Textmagic and Pollfish (vendor survey, 2025, n=1,800 US adults)

What this means for your team: make every text easy to recognize. Put your business name in the first few words, reference something the customer did (“your request for a lawn care quote”), avoid link shorteners and never ask for sensitive details by text. Registering your number for business texting also matters for deliverability; see our 10DLC registration guide.

Turning the numbers into habits

What the data says	What to do
Nearly everyone has a mobile phone	Collect a mobile number and texting consent on every form
People read texts within minutes	Reply to inbound texts within an hour during business hours
Reminders and updates are the most wanted texts	Lead with transactional texts before promotions
Over-messaging is the top opt-out reason	Cap marketing texts at a few per month
Scam texts make people suspicious	Name your business up front and skip shortened links

If you’re setting this up for a service business, our home services page shows how reminders and quote follow-ups fit together. Templates with merge tags help you send consistent messages without sounding robotic; you can find ready-made wording in sales follow-up templates.

Final thoughts

The independent data is clear on reach: almost every adult carries a phone, and Americans still send trillions of texts a year. The vendor surveys agree with each other on the rest. Customers want useful, two-way texts from businesses, they read them quickly, and they leave when businesses send too much or don’t reply.

Treat texting as a conversation channel, not a broadcast list. Get consent, answer fast, keep marketing messages rare and make every text easy to trust.