Best Dispensary Loyalty and SMS Software: springbig vs Alpine IQ vs Sprout

The best dispensary loyalty and SMS software in 2026 comes down to three names owners actually shortlist: springbig, Alpine IQ and Sprout. Alpine IQ is the strongest fit for multi-location operators that want loyalty, messaging and customer data in one platform, and it is reported at roughly $900 to $1,200 a month. springbig is the longest-established cannabis-specific option and is often the easiest to run for a single shop, but its parent company disclosed substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern in its May 2026 SEC filing, which is worth reading before you sign a multi-year term. Sprout is the lighter-weight choice for shops that mainly want campaigns and automations without a full customer data platform. All three sit behind the same gate: without carrier registration, none of them will deliver a single text.

The comparison, at a glance

None of these prices are published by the vendors. Every figure above is either third-party reporting or aggregated buyer data, and we have said which is which. Treat them as anchors for a negotiation, not as quotes.

What are you actually buying?

The category bundles three jobs that owners often assume are one. The first is a loyalty program: points, tiers, rewards and the enrollment mechanics at the register. The second is messaging: the ability to send SMS and email campaigns to people who opted in. The third is a customer data platform: unifying purchase history across locations so you can segment by behavior rather than by guesswork.

A single-location shop that wants points and a Tuesday deal text needs the first two. It does not need the third, and the third is most of the price difference between the tiers. Buying the full platform and using it as a text blaster is the most common overspend in this category, and it is easy to do because the demo always shows the segmentation.

Work out which of the three jobs is actually failing before you take a demo. If your complaint is that you have no way to reach past customers, that is messaging. If it is that you cannot tell which customers are worth reaching, that is data. Those have different price tags.

Do I need 10DLC registration for dispensary texting?

Yes, and this is the part that decides whether any of the software above works at all. Since February 2025 the major US carriers block unregistered application-to-person traffic from ten-digit numbers outright. An unregistered dispensary texting program does not underperform or land in spam folders. It does not deliver.

Registration runs through The Campaign Registry in two stages: you register the brand first, then each campaign separately. Cannabis and hemp are classified as high-risk, which means additional scrutiny during review, lower message throughput once approved, and the possibility of filtering even after approval. Budget weeks, not days.

The detail owners most often get wrong is jurisdictional. This is private carrier policy, not state law. Operating in a fully legal adult-use state does not exempt you, because the carriers are applying their own content standards to their own networks. Reported first-offense penalties for prohibited content have run in the range of $1,000 to $2,000 per message. Educational messaging is generally registrable; promotional campaigns that name specific products and prices are considerably harder to get approved.

Ask each vendor a direct question: do you handle brand and campaign registration for me, and what is your approval rate for cannabis retail campaigns? A platform that manages registration well is worth more than one with better dashboards.

How much does Alpine IQ cost?

Reported at roughly $900 to $1,200 a month for typical deployments. The more useful number comes from Vendr, a procurement platform that aggregates what buyers actually pay rather than what vendors advertise: an average annual contract near $70,000 and a maximum observed near $108,000. That is a materially different picture from the monthly figure, and it reflects the fact that pricing varies by location count, modules, database size, onboarding and message volume.

Alpine IQ is reported not to charge extra per store or per loyalty program member, which matters more than it sounds. In a category where the billing meter differs by vendor, a platform that does not meter on the thing you are trying to grow removes a real disincentive. If your loyalty list doubling also doubles your bill, you will find yourself managing the bill instead of the list.

When you get a quote, ask for the total first-year cost with onboarding and message volume included, and ask what the number becomes at renewal. Two platforms with identical monthly headlines routinely differ by five figures a year once those lines are filled in. The same arithmetic applies across the rest of your spend, which we itemize in our breakdown of dispensary marketing cost by channel.

What is going on with springbig?

springbig is the longest-established cannabis-specific loyalty platform and it remains widely deployed. It is also a public company, which means its financial position is a matter of public record rather than rumor, and that record is relevant if you are being asked to sign a multi-year agreement.

In its quarterly filing for the period ended March 31, 2026, springbig Holdings disclosed cash of $1.3 million against a working capital deficit of $13.2 million, reclassified $9.8 million of secured convertible and term notes as current, and stated that these conditions raise substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern for at least twelve months. The filing also discloses a Notice of Default and Reservation of Rights received on April 21, 2026 in relation to those notes.

That is a disclosure, not a prediction. Companies operate through going-concern qualifications regularly and springbig is actively serving customers. But it changes what a careful buyer asks for: a shorter initial term, a written commitment on data export format and timing, and clarity on what happens to your customer list and your points liability if the platform changes hands. Those are reasonable asks in any software purchase and unusually reasonable here.

If you are already on the platform, the practical step is not to panic-migrate. It is to export your customer list and points balances now and keep doing it monthly, so that the decision stays yours.

Can dispensaries text customers legally?

Yes, with consent and registration. You need documented opt-in from the customer, carrier registration through The Campaign Registry, and message content that satisfies both your state's advertising rules and the carriers' content standards. The state rules and the carrier rules are separate systems and you have to clear both.

State advertising law is the layer most owners already know about. The most common US requirement is that at least 71.6% of an advertisement's audience be reasonably expected to be 21 or older, a threshold that appears in near-identical language in California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan and Arizona. For a text list built from verified adult purchasers in your own shop, that threshold is straightforward to meet, which is part of why owned messaging is attractive in a category where paid channels are closed.

Keep records of consent. The value of an opted-in list is that it is yours and it keeps working when you pause a spend, but that only holds if you can demonstrate how each number got there. Our fuller guide to dispensary SMS marketing walks through the registration path and the content rules in more detail.

Which one should a single-location dispensary pick?

For one shop, start from the cheapest option that clears carrier registration reliably and gives you a points program your budtenders will actually use at the counter. That is usually Sprout or springbig rather than Alpine IQ, because the customer data platform capability that justifies Alpine IQ's price does not pay for itself across a single location's transaction volume.

For two to five locations, the calculation shifts. Once a customer can shop at more than one of your stores, unified purchase history stops being a nice report and starts being the thing that makes segmentation possible at all. That is the point where Alpine IQ's price starts to be defensible.

Above five locations, the question is usually not which platform but how it integrates with your point of sale, since a loyalty platform that does not talk cleanly to the register creates manual reconciliation work that scales with store count. We cover the vendor landscape more broadly in our guide to dispensary loyalty program software.

The channel most owners underuse

Loyalty and SMS both work on people who have already visited. They are retention tools, and retention is the cheapest revenue in cannabis retail because paid acquisition is so constrained. But they do nothing for the shopper who has not found you yet, and owners routinely discover they have spent $1,200 a month talking to their existing customers while the person three miles away has never heard of the shop.

The two channels that reach that person are local search and licensed directory placement. Both are covered in our breakdown of dispensary marketing ideas for licensed shops. A claimed listing on a licensed-only directory starts at $99 a month and puts your live menu and daily deals in front of adults searching your area, which is a different job from texting the people already on your list.

The other retention asset owners underuse is reviews. A loyalty program identifies your happiest customers at exactly the moment they are happiest, which is the ideal moment to ask for a review, and steady review flow is one of the few ranking signals in local search you can directly influence. Wiring that ask into your post-purchase messaging, or running it through dedicated customer review collection software, converts a program you are already paying for into local search visibility you would otherwise have to buy.

The five questions to send before any demo

1. What is the billing meter? Per location, per contact, per message, or a flat platform fee. This determines whether growth raises your bill.
2. Do you handle brand and campaign registration, and what is your approval rate for cannabis retail? Without this, the software does not function.
3. What is the total first-year cost, including onboarding and message volume, and what does it become at renewal?
4. How does it integrate with my point of sale, and what breaks if I switch POS?
5. What is the contract term, the notice period, and in what format can I export my customer list and points balances?

A vendor that answers all five in writing is a vendor you can compare against another. A vendor that will only discuss them on a call is telling you something about how the price gets set.