Podium Pricing: Texting, Chat and the Bill for a Practice

Someone pitches you Podium and you want to know the bill and what the front desk will do all day. Podium's pricing page shows Core at $399 and Pro at $599 per month, with texting fees on top and a twelve-month contract.

Quick answer

• Ask who answers the texts, and by when, before you ask the price.
• Get the quote in writing with every fee listed, then compare it to your current phone and review costs.
• Read the term: twelve months, renews itself, 30 days' written notice to stop it.
• Decide how you will count chats that became booked visits, without relying on the dashboard.

Who answers the texts, and how fast?

Podium is an inbox first, so the product is only as good as the person watching it. Leads and reviews land in one shared team inbox that your front desk must answer.

Podium's own page says it wants to "make your website textable". A visitor opens the chat box on your site, and the AI can continue it by text.

Before any demo, decide three things:

• Which staff member owns the inbox between 8 and 5.
• Who covers lunch, evenings and weekends, or whether the AI replies then.
• What the AI may say about prices, insurance and symptoms. It should say nothing about symptoms.

A chat that waits until Monday may book elsewhere.

What is Podium, in plain words?

It bundles four front desk tools and an AI add-on. The table reads them from the desk's side.

What does the bill look like?

Two plans carry a price, and the extras sit lower on the same page. Podium's pricing page shows Core at $399 and Pro at $599 per month, while Signature says "Custom pricing". A note under the plan table says plans "may vary" with industry, volume and carrier fees.

The comparison table adds the lines below; bulk messages are one text sent to many contacts at once, and unused credits expire each month.

10DLC means a 10-digit long code: business texting from an ordinary ten-digit number. A business must be registered and verified through its texting provider before it can send. Podium's terms bill 10DLC charges as "Industry Fees" on top of plan fees and say they "may change at any time".

The written quote is what counts, so ask for these lines by name:

1. Whether the plan price is per location, and the total for all your locations.
2. The bulk message credits you need, and the price of more.
3. Setup, phone and 10DLC fees, including the phones fee if you take Podium Phones.
4. Payment processing rate per transaction, if you use payments.
5. The AI Employee price, if the rep adds it.
6. Price after the first term.

What do the terms commit you to?

You commit to twelve months, and the contract renews itself. Podium's terms of service set the first term at twelve months unless your order says otherwise, renewing automatically for equal periods.

To stop a renewal, give written notice at least 30 days before the term ends; the terms accept an email to support@podium.com.

They also say a client cannot cancel mid-term except as the terms allow. Leave early for another reason and you owe the fees for the whole term. Fees are generally non-refundable, and a price rise on your order needs 45 days' written notice and starts with the next term.

Try this in ten minutes:

1. Find the subscription start date on your order. If none is printed, the terms count from the day you first got access.
2. Add twelve months, then subtract 30 days.
3. Put that date in your calendar with the word "cancel".

What do the texting rules mean for a practice?

Podium sends the texts, but you answer for them. Its terms say the client must give required disclosures and obtain required consents from its customers, your patients. They also say the client stays "solely responsible" for compliance with applicable law, and marketing texts must be marked "Marketing" in Podium before sending.

Three points:

• Consent. The FCC's rules ban autodialed texts to a mobile phone unless its owner consented first. Commercial texts need written consent; informational ones may rest on oral consent. My guide to texting patients sorts practice texts by type.
• HIPAA. The terms say that if you are a HIPAA covered entity or business associate, you and Podium agree to Podium's business associate agreement. That is the HIPAA contract with a vendor that handles patient data. It is Podium's statement, not my promise, so read the agreement before patient details go into texts.
• Canada. A Canadian practice answers to PIPEDA or a similar provincial law, such as Ontario's for health information, not HIPAA. A text that encourages commercial activity falls under CASL, whose definition of an electronic message includes text messages.

Also decide whether review invites go to every patient. Google's review policy forbids businesses to "selectively solicit positive reviews" from customers. My Birdeye pricing guide covers the review rules.

Will it tell you which ad brought the chat?

Partly: Podium explains how to count chats in Google Analytics, not how to send a booking back to Google Ads.

Its help center shows how to send two Webchat events, "Bubble Clicked" and "Conversation Started", to Google Analytics 4. The route is Google Tag Manager, the free tool that adds tracking tags to a site. I found no Podium page saying the ad or click ID travels into the conversation, or that a booked visit reaches Google Ads.

Ask the rep, and count it yourself meanwhile:

• Does the chat record the page the visitor started on?
• Who sets up the two Google Analytics events, and can "Conversation Started" count in Google Ads?
• Does a booked visit ever come back to the ad account?

For your own count, add a "How did you find us?" question at booking, with "website chat" as a choice, and a "Text us" button on ad landing pages. The three counting levels show how far each option reaches.

What does a month look like in numbers?

Illustrative: every number below is made up for an imaginary chiropractic office, and none comes from a client.

Formula: monthly fee divided by booked visits from chat, so here $500 divided by 30 is $16.67 per booking. Divided by the 24 visits that happened, it is $20.83 per visit.

Repeat it with your own quote, and leave out visits that would have booked by phone anyway. Read the same figure against what a new patient is worth to you. If chat books few visits, judge the inbox on reminders and replies instead.

What about the ratings?

Trustpilot shows a 4.0 out of 5 TrustScore from 363 reviews. Capterra and G2 pages blocked my automated check, so I quote no rating from them.

Prices and rules checked on 2026-10-23.