10 HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Platforms Every Medical Practice Should Know

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Every day, medical practices have difficulties communicating securely with patients. We studied hundreds of reviews and tested several platforms. We found that most HIPAA-compliant messaging solutions have weak EHR integration, complicated user interfaces that involve time-consuming training, and insufficient protective measures that put practices at risk for non-compliance.

We tested 10 prominent ‘security’ and ‘workflow’ integration alternatives. Ready? Let’s go.

What Problems Exist with Current Messaging Platforms that Follow HIPAA Guidelines?

Although many platforms assert that they follow HIPAA guidelines, some user complaints are quite noticeable. Reviewing feedback from medical practices on G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and various industry-related forums, these are some of the issues:

• Gaps in security and compliance risks – Many services do not provide adequate encryption, audit trails, and consent management, which could lead to severe violations of HIPAA for the practices.
• Poor integration with EHRs – Staff are forced to use multiple different apps which causes inefficient workflows and increases the chance for errors.
• Complicated design – Platforms that are complicated and require a large amount of training to use are often met with resistance from staff which prolongs the training and leads to a decrease in productivity.
• Unsatisfactory mobile app – Staff that are in the field and on-call doctors are unable to communicate properly due to this limited mobile access.
• Lack of messaging collaboration – The care coordination process is negatively impacted by primitive messaging systems that do not incorporate routing, task assignments, or comments.

(TL;DR) Velocity in Messaging Platforms that Comply with HIPAA

1) Textline– The #1 HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Platform in the Market Right Now

⭐ 4.8/5 (500+ reviews)

After careful analysis, Textline is validated as the most comprehensive HIPAA compliant messaging solution. Tailored for Textline’s first and only messaging solution, Textline’s patented processes make HIPAA compliance more of a design feature rather than a back-end process.

Textline vs. Traditional HIPAA Messaging: Key Differences

Main Features:

• One of a kind HIPAA consent management – Textline uniquely holds the record of being the only provider of HIPAA-consistent texting services and adheres to fully HIPAA auditing documentation competitors lack.
• Integrated unified inbox – Textline uniquely offers an inbox that integrates users’ texts and chats across all channels, including SMS, MMS, Facebook, Instagram, and web messaging. Other services end at split messaging.
• Superior employee collaboration – Textline messaging is more than a basic texting service. Employees can transfer conversations, route questions, and whisper text, which provides enhanced seamless pairing of teams.
• Highest level enterprise security – At this level, SOC 2 compliance, IP address whitelisting, support for a HIPAA VPN, and SSO with SAML is not standard but Textline goes beyond to offer these to keep all data secure with configurable retention.
• Authentic group texting – Textline is the first to provide many-to-many group texting for businesses where 10 employees can text as a team for instant collaboration.

Pricing starts at Custom Quote

Based on what plan works best for your organization, Textline uses a credit-based system, and prices vary by plan:

Credits are $0.03 each (1 SMS = 1 credit; 1 MMS = 3 credits). Annual plans save 10-20% on costs.

What features come with Textline?

Along with fully HIPAA-compliant messaging, Textline is more than a messaging platform; it’s a robust ecosystem with features such as automated appointment reminders, patient surveys, broadcast messaging for health alerts, landline texting (so you can use your existing phone number), and powerful analytics to monitor engagement and performance across your organization.

“We researched, surveyed, and chatted with over a dozen text-solution companies, and Textline was the top contender. A year after using them, I am so glad we chose Textline. It’s user-friendly, easy to implement, and simple to train new employees on. It’s HIPAA compliant (which is huge for us), has great customer support, and is the perfect tool for daily use.” – Felisha W. (G2)

2) SimpleTexting – User-Friendly SMS Marketing for Healthcare

⭐ 4.6/5 (1000+ reviews)

SimpleTexting has simple SMS services for businesses, including some basic compliance with HIPAA. It’s not as specialized as some healthcare solutions, but it is more accessible for smaller practices that want to add SMS services.

Key Features: 

• Ability to send bulk SMS messages to large groups of patients for appointment reminders and health alerts, although more specific healthcare capabilities are absent
• Ability to have real-time SMS conversations with patients, although it lacks more specialized clinical collaboration features
• Patients can send messages to the practice and the practice does not incur additional costs for receiving messages. However, the system does not have more specialized message routing and assignment features
• Messages can be created with the assistance of AI, although there are not any templates that are specific to healthcare or compliance frameworks
• SMS messages can be scheduled to be sent as a part of basic drip campaigns and, like many healthcare solutions, more sophisticated sequencing and workflow automation are not available

Before choosing SimpleTexting. SimpleTexting is easy to use but does not have the strong HIPAA compliance, EHR integrations, and healthcare-specific workflows that medical practices need. Simple Texting is better for general business use and not for the heavily regulated healthcare arena.

Pricing starts at $25

SimpleTexting offers tiered monthly plans based on message volume:

All plans include unlimited contacts, two-way messaging, and basic reporting. Additional messages cost $0.03-$0.05 each.

3) TextMagic – Omnichannel Business Communication Platform

⭐ 4.5/5 (800+ reviews)

TextMagic aims to be an all-in-one business communication tool focusing on SMS, email, voice, and chat. Although it provides some compliance-compatible tools, it is not healthcare-focused.

Key Features:

• Multi-channel messaging support – SMS, Email, voice calls, and chat widgets. Healthcare-focused channels and compliance are absent.
• Integration with WhatsApp and Facebook – Centralize social messaging with SMS. The clinical context and HIPAA safeguards required for communication with patients are absent.
• Email-to-SMS gateway – Send text messages via email clients without integration, but audit trails required for compliance are absent.
• Virtual mobile numbers – Receive inbound messages without Prior contact. Lack of patient messaging consent management is still an issue.
• Point AI for knowledge base integration – Documents can be converted for instant replies. However, this is not designed for medical-related information or HIPAA compliance.

Factors to evaluate before choosing TextMagic: While TextMagic has more features than many competitors, this means the platform is more generalized and therefore less specialized for healthcare. TextMagic may be used in healthcare, but it doesn’t truly fit. There is no solid HIPAA compliance, no EHR integrations, and lack the clinical workflow features that help medical practices communicate with patients.

Pricing starts at Pay-per-message

TextMagic is credit-based and has no monthly charges:

Volume discounts available for high-usage accounts. No setup fees or monthly minimums.

4) Heymarket – AI-Powered Team Messaging Platform

⭐ 4.4/5 (300+ reviews)

Heymarket prioritizes team-oriented communication integrated with AI and a shared inbox feature. While they have some aspects of healthcare, they are more of a general business offering with HIPAA compliance rather than being a healthcare-first platform.

Main Aspects:

• AI communication tools – Automated responses, adjustments to message content, and summarization of threads. However, AI models and training do not center around healthcare like other platforms.
• Collaboration through a shared inbox – While customers can assign messages, annotate to streamline workflows, and route messages to different team members, they do not have the clinical workflow tools that other healthcare solutions have.
• Support for multiple platforms including email (in progress) – Use messages through SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. While many other healthcare-focused platforms have extensive integrations, they do not offer email services yet.
• Group messages with a limit of 10 contacts – While providing multi-party communication for care coordination, this limit may be inhibitive to larger part healthcare teams.
• Compliance with HIPAA and SOC 2 – Basic offerings for healthcare compliance are provided, but without the more advanced, specialized consent management and auditing tools of healthcare focused platforms.

Things to keep in mind with Heymarket: Heymarket provides decent team messaging solutions; however, it doesn’t have the type of healthcare messaging specialization, true EHR integrations, and pertinent compliance solutions for the messaging needs of medical practices.

$19 per month

Heymarket has monthly user-based pricing with AI tiers:

Every plan has unlimited messaging, HIPAA compliance, and essential collaboration tools. Get a 15% discount with annual billing.

5) SlickText – SMS Marketing Automation Platform

⭐ 4.3/5 (600+ reviews)

SlickText helps with SMS marketing automation and is used by over 15,000 businesses. It has some features useful to healthcare, but since its primary focus is on marketing, rather than clinical communication and patient care coordination, it offers very limited scope for integrated care. Some of its features include:

Key Features:

• Marketing oriented patient engagement – Custom branded web forms, QR codes, and text message marketing keywords allow you to build a subscriber list, but they are not designed for patient engagement.
• Marketing oriented automation – Visual workflow automation allows for basic A-B testing and conditional logic work, but it does not include healthcare automation, clinical workflow, or marketing to patient automation.
• Customized patient communication – No clinical or healthcare system data integration to provide patient-centered communication in healthcare.
• Retail oriented features – Ecommerce tracking, revenue attribution, and ROI analysis are better suited to retail marketing rather than healthcare marketing.
• Unlimited segmentation – SlickText has no EHR (Electronic Health Records) integration, so clinical data and behavior data are not incorporated into its messaging. Whether or not Webb has a healthcare focus contradicts SlickText’s integration features.

Things to think about before selecting SlickText: SlickText is great for automating marketing campaigns, BUT like all marketing focused platforms, it lacks the clinical perspective, EHR integration, and the nuanced HIPAA compliance tools medical practices require to communicate with patients. It is more appropriate for marketing in healthcare than caring for patients.

Starting price is $29

SlickText has contact based monthly subscription models:

Every plan offers unlimited messaging, along with compliance tools and basic automation features. Larger organizations can inquire about enterprise pricing.

6) Podium – AI-Powered Customer Communication Platform

⭐ 4.2/5 (2000+ reviews)

Podium claims to be an AI integrated business communication platform, focusing on lead conversion and customer acquisition. While they have some healthcare practice clients, their communication with healthcare professionals and patient care is mostly neglected.

Notable Offerings:

• AI Employee provides round the clock lead engagement. While automation provides responses in less than a minute, their answer is not appropriate in a clinical context and therefore may not be as useful in lead conversion as they think.
• Inbox Unification – Texts, website chat, social media, and reviews can be managed in one system. However, they still lack the clinical context and EHR integration.
• Review Automation – AI to request, respond and manage reviews, more focused on reputation management than in care outcome management.
• Specialized AI – Data collected over ten years is verticalized and industry-specific. For some, it is medical practice focused, but in most cases, it is for sales and does not address clinical workflows.
• Sales Optimization – Designed to drive sales by as much as 30 percent with automated follow-up and scheduling. Again, no regard for patient care integration.

Things to think about With Podium: Podium is great for lead generation and customer acquisition but is missing some core clinical focus, HIPAA, EHR integration, and other communication and care coordination functions due to the lack of focus on the needs of medical practices regarding ongoing patient communication and care coordination.

Starting cost is $399

Podium has monthly subscription plans with AI features:

Every plan has unlimited messaging, basic compliance, and core AI features, including setup and training.

7) Twilio – Programmable Communications Platform

⭐ 4.1/5 (1500+ reviews)

Twilio claims to offer everything a developing communication vendor needs including APIs for messaging, voice, video, and email. Although especially customizable and scalable, the necessary upkeep and implementation can be quite overwhelming, so they are fairly unsuitable for most medical vendors.

Notable Characteristics:

• Programmable Messaging APIs – It is possible to develop your own SMS, MMS, and RCS messaging solutions with WhatsApp integration, however, it does require a lot of development tools and resources that most vendors simply do not have.
• Global Scale and Reliability – Provides high-volume messaging across 100+ countries (which is more than most healthcare vendors need for patient communications).
• Customer Data Platform (Segment) – Personalization can be done by integrating more than 700 source systems, however, most vendors do not have a dedicated IT team so this ends up being more complicated than it seems.
• Voice and Video – Provides the ability to add calling and video conferencing to messaging workflows. Additional custom development work is needed to adapt to the healthcare sector.
• Enterprise-grade security – protection against fraud and compliance tools are available, but do require technical work to ensure HIPPA compliance.

Before choosing Twilio, there are considerations: Twilio’s strength lies in its complexity. The majority of medical practices do not have the technical ability to customize, implement, and sustain Twilio’s APIs for healthcare, making them less practical than specialized healthcare platforms.

Pricing starts at $0.0075

Twilio has the following pay-as-you-go pricing:

Extra charges will apply for telephony ($1 to $15 per month), premium functionalities, and assistance. Discounts for higher volumes are available.

8) Klara – Patient Communication and Collaboration Platform

⭐ 4.0/5 (400+ reviews)

Klara has been built for healthcare use cases, concentrating on patient engagement and communication with care teams. Although it has strong EHR interoperability and HIPAA compliance, its features are more limited than some other more robust solutions.

Key Features:

• Patient communications on multiple channels – Healthcare workflow specific text, web chat, call-to-text, and voicemail transcription.
• Major EHR system integrations – Patient data synchronization with AthenaHealth, Veradigm, Nextech, and more.
• Appointment workflow automation – Personalized reminders and automated follow-up sequences reduce patient no-shows.
• Collaboration for teams – Care team share inboxes, internal notes, and AI-driven routing.
• Telehealth – HIPAA-compliant video consultations, virtual waiting rooms, and document sharing.

Considerations before going with Klara: While Klara is healthcare focused, its feature set is more limited than more comprehensive platforms like Textline. It lacks advanced automation, group messaging, and integrations, which larger practice ecosystems often require.

Pricing starts at Custom Quote

Klara offers tiered pricing based on practice size and needs:

Pricing varies by number of providers and message volume. Implementation and training included.

9) OhMD – EHR-Integrated Patient Communication Platform

⭐ 4.2/5 (250+ reviews)

OhMD focuses on the integration of patient communication that upholds HIPAA standards and has the most EHR integrations. It connects to over 85 EHR systems and is built to help healthcare practices optimize patient messaging workflows.

Key Features:

• EHR integration – Over 85 EHR integrations including Epic, Cerner, athenahealth, and Allscripts for streamlined patient data synchronization
• Voicemail transcription and call-to-text – Transform calls and voicemails into text for quicker staff replies and improved workflow
• Referral management – Automated intake and dedicated referral lines to reduce referral leakage and enhance patient capture
• Communication with no patient-side app – Patients can send and receive texts without worrying about downloads or logins
• Keyword triggers and smart routing – Automate the management of simple requests such as prescription refills with structured data entry into the EHR.

Things to think about before choosing OhMD: OhMD is very strong in EHR integrations, but OhMD does not offer as many features compared to other comprehensive platforms. For example, OhMD does not offer advanced team collaboration features, group messaging, and extensive automation, which larger practices typically require.

Pricing begins at Custom Quote

OhMD provides subscription pricing according to the size of the practice:

Pricing varies by number of providers and message volume. EHR integration setup included.

10) ClickSend – Multi-Channel Business Communication Platform

⭐ 4.3/5 (900+ reviews)

The ClickSend platform is designed for general businesses, aiding communication via SMS, email, voice, fax, and direct mail. While serving APIs compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for the healthcare sector, it is not designed for healthcare-specific needs.

Main Characteristics:

• A communication platform without healthcare-specific customization that enables users to send and receive SMS, MMS, emails, voices, faxes, and direct mails.
• APIs that comply with HIPAA regulations. There is a Special Delivery API designed for healthcare, but it comes with a requirement for a technical setup and additional configuration.
• Able to connect and integrate with a little over 700 external applications including the top-tier customer relationship management (CRM) systems and helpdesks; However, there is a dominant absence of healthcare focused electronic health record (EHR) integrations.
• There is a lot more than what is usually necessary for the majority of healthcare practices; larger domestic countries can usually offer more than the av
• Schemas, Software Development Kits (SDKs), and Representing State Transfer (REST) APIs are provided for customizable solutions. However, these solutions are often too complicated with the technical skills many users do not have.

Things to think about before going for ClickSend: Although ClickSend has a wide variety of features, they are not tailored for the healthcare industry. Taking the time to establish HIPAA compliance is a bit of a technical challenge on their end, and they do not cover the necessary clinical workflows, EHR integrations, and healthcare specific scenarios.

Prices begin at $0.029

ClickSend charges per message, regardless of the channel:

There is no fee and no monthly minimums. Volume discounts are available for high-usage accounts.

The Verdict: Which HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Platform Should You Choose? (Our Top 3 Picks)

We have conducted an in-depth analysis of each vendor and present our top choices below:

• Textline – Winner for medical practices focused on HIPAA Compliance and team collaboration. Textline is noted for its patented consent process and enterprise-level security, making it the most complete option. With its integrated unified inbox, superior team features, and comprehensive EHR system connectivity, this is the go-to option for medical practices to communicate securely with patients.
• Klara – Winner for practices that put most emphasis on patient engagement and EHR system connectivity. Klara is noted for her appointment automation and telemedicine offerings.
• OhMD – Winner for practices that need to have more access to EHR’s. 85+ EHRs including EHR focused features which provide seamless access to synchronized electronic health records.

For medical practices that need complete HIPAA Compliance, advanced team collaboration, and security features, Textline is recognized as the most comprehensive vendor in the category.

HIPAA Compliance Requires the Right People, Not Just Platforms

Invedus provides healthcare virtual assistants and trained virtual professionals who work within HIPAA-aligned frameworks to support medical practices securely. Our teams are trained in patient data confidentiality, secure communication protocols, and healthcare documentation standards, enabling them to handle tasks such as patient messaging, appointment coordination, intake support, and administrative workflows without compromising compliance or privacy.