Privy is a deal-finding tool. You run comps, spot the flips and the underpriced listings, build a watchlist, and walk away with a list of properties — and, often, a list of owners you want to reach. That last part is where a lot of investors stall. You've found the deal. Now you have to actually contact the seller, at volume, without torching your phone numbers or stepping on a TCPA landmine.
Full disclosure: I work for ReadySMS, so I have a side in this. But the honest framing is this — Privy and ReadySMS aren't really competitors. Privy tells you who and where. ReadySMS is how you reach them. This post is about the reach part: doing it cheaply, at scale, and in a way that doesn't get you carrier-filtered or sued.
Where Privy is genuinely strong
Credit where it's due. Privy's actual job — investor-grade property analysis — is something a generic SMS platform will never do. If you're using it for:
- Comps and ARV estimates built for investors, not retail buyers
- Live deal alerts when something hits the market matching your criteria
- Strategy filtering (fix-and-flip vs. wholesale vs. buy-and-hold)
- Market trend data you can actually act on
…it's earning its keep. Confirm current features and pricing at Privy's own site — I'm not going to guess at numbers that change. The point is: keep using the tool that finds you deals. Don't try to replace your analysis engine with a texting platform.
The gap shows up at the next step. Once you've got owner contact data, you need a channel that's cheap per message (because you're sending thousands), compliant (because cold real-estate texting is a litigation magnet), and ideally tied to a phone dialer (because the warm replies need a call, fast).
The math that decides this
Investor outreach is a volume game. You're not texting 50 people — you're texting 5,000 or 50,000 absentee owners to find the handful who'll sell. So the per-message cost isn't a footnote. It's the whole budget.
Here's a worked example. Say you send a 175-character cold message — and you toss in an emoji because it bumps response rates. That emoji flips the whole message to unicode encoding, which caps segments at 70 characters. So 175 characters = 3 segments, not 1.
A 5,000-contact blast on the ReadySMS Starter tier:
`` 5,000 contacts × 3 segments × ($0.0155 send + $0.0045 carrier) = $300 ``
Drop the emoji and rewrite to fit 160 GSM-7 characters, and that same blast is one segment each:
`` 5,000 contacts × 1 segment × ($0.0155 + $0.0045) = $100 ``
That's the difference between knowing your segment math and not. Same list, same offer, 3x the cost from one emoji. If you're running this monthly across multiple markets, that gap compounds into real money. There's a full breakdown of how to cut SMS costs if you want the deeper version, and a cost calculator to plug in your own numbers.
The principle: pick a sending layer priced as a thin pass-through over carrier cost, not a reseller markup. ReadySMS drops to $0.0028/segment at Enterprise volume (500K+ segments/mo), with the carrier fee itemized separately so the bill is legible.
ReadySMS pricing, plainly
Per outbound segment, plus a flat $0.0045/segment carrier pass-through billed separately:
| Tier | Volume / month | Per segment | + carrier | All-in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 0–50,000 | $0.0155 | $0.0045 | $0.0200 |
| Growth | 50,000–500,000 | $0.0125 | $0.0045 | $0.0170 |
| Enterprise | 500,000+ | $0.0028 | $0.0045 | $0.0073 |
You get 20 free test sends to your own verified number before registering, and a $25 credit when you submit 10DLC registration (1 credit = 1 segment). It's pay-as-you-go with no monthly platform fee and no contract, so you can prove out reply rates on a small batch before scaling up. See the full pricing page for the current tiers.
Cold real-estate texting is a compliance minefield — handle it on purpose
Here's the part nobody likes to think about until it's a problem. Cold-texting property owners is exactly the activity TCPA litigators look for. Each unsolicited text can carry $500–$1,500 in statutory exposure. One annoyed recipient who happens to be a serial plaintiff can turn a 5,000-message blast into a five-figure headache.
I'm not going to tell you ReadySMS makes you lawsuit-proof — nobody can, and compliance is ultimately the sender's responsibility. But the platform is built to reduce the exposure at every step:
- Done-for-you A2P 10DLC — brand and campaign registration handled in-app (roughly ~$10/mo per brand, ~$20/mo per campaign in carrier fees, approval usually 4–7 business days). Unregistered traffic gets carrier-filtered, so for investor volume this isn't optional. Here's the 10DLC explainer.
- Litigator + DNC scrubbing — there's a standalone TCPA & DNC scrub at $0.005 per contact that screens known litigator and DNC-complainer numbers before you send. On a 5,000 list that's $25 to suppress the numbers most likely to cost you four figures each. Cheap insurance.
- Quiet-hours enforcement — sends held outside permitted local hours based on the recipient's area, so you don't accidentally fire a blast at 7am someone's time.
- Automatic STOP handling — opt-outs are honored and propagate across campaigns, so a contact who's done won't get hit again from a different list.
None of that exists in a deal-finding tool, because it's not its job. It's the missing half of the workflow.
Speed-to-lead: the part that actually closes deals
When a seller replies "how much?", the clock starts. The investors who win are the ones who get a human on the phone fastest. That's why ReadySMS bundles a Power Dialer — you're not paying for a separate dialer subscription and stitching two tools together.
Plans, billed per agent (minutes in 6-second increments):
- Free — $0/mo, 1 agent, 1 free number, 500 minutes/mo, then $0.06/min
- Pro — $29/agent/mo, up to 3 agents, $0.05/min
- Team — $69/agent/mo, unlimited agents, $0.0375/min, speed-to-lead auto-dial, lead routing, manager monitoring
The Team tier's speed-to-lead auto-dial is the relevant feature here: a fresh reply triggers an automatic call, so you're connected while the seller is still thinking about it. Pair that with voicemail drop for the no-answers and you can work a list of warm replies in a fraction of the time. If you want the deeper dial-cost math, the Mojo Dialer alternative post covers the cost-per-connect angle for real-estate dialing specifically.
If you live in GoHighLevel
A lot of investors run their pipeline in GoHighLevel. ReadySMS has a native GHL integration over OAuth — two-way message sync, inbound replies landing in your GHL conversations, mapped per location. So your Privy-sourced list goes in, the texting and dialing happen, and the replies show up where your CRM already lives. Nothing to copy-paste between tabs. The GHL setup guide walks through connecting it.
If you're not on GHL, that's fine too — the in-app conversations inbox, bulk campaigns, and contact management work standalone.
How the two fit together
| Step | Tool |
|---|---|
| Find underpriced deals, run comps | Privy |
| Pull owner contact data | Your list source / skip trace |
| Scrub litigators + DNC | ReadySMS ($0.005/contact) |
| Register 10DLC brand + campaign | ReadySMS (done-for-you) |
| Blast compliant SMS (from $0.0028/segment at 500K+/mo volume) | ReadySMS |
| Auto-dial warm replies (speed-to-lead) | ReadySMS Power Dialer |
| Replies sync to CRM | ReadySMS + GHL |
This isn't "replace Privy." It's "stop letting the outreach half of your pipeline be the weak link."
The practical takeaway
Keep the deal-finding tool that's finding you deals. Where Privy is strong — investor comps, alerts, strategy filtering — a texting platform won't touch it. But the moment you have a list of owners to contact, you want a sending layer that's priced near carrier cost, ships compliant on registered 10DLC, scrubs litigators, and hands warm replies to a dialer the same minute they come in.
The honest test: try the 20 free test sends, register 10DLC to bank the $25 credit, scrub the list for $25, run a real campaign, and see whether the cost-per-conversation beats what you're paying now. If it doesn't, you've spent almost nothing. If it does, you've found the cheap, compliant half of your deal machine. Start at the pricing page or plug your list size into the calculator first.