Comparison
Human RM vs Hit Em Up
Hit Em Up is the one product genuinely doing the same thing, it has been doing it for over a decade, and it is good. Here is where each of them wins, including the places where we do not.
The short answer
Phones or Mac. That is most of the decision.
Choose Hit Em Up if you need to send from a phone today. It runs on iPhone, iPad and Android, and it sends through WhatsApp, which matters enormously outside the United States. Human RM does not do those things yet. It started on the Mac because that is where it can drive the Messages and Gmail accounts you are already signed in to — which is what lets it send from your real number rather than a rented one. That is a starting point, not a boundary.
Choose Human RM if you work from a Mac and you want your address book to stay on it. No account, no upload, no copy of who you know sitting on somebody’s server — and every recipient’s face in front of you before you press send.
Anyone telling you one of these is simply better than the other is selling something. They answer the same question from two different ends.
Side by side
What each one actually does.
| Human RM | Hit Em Up | |
|---|---|---|
| Sends individual 1-on-1 messages | Yes | Yes |
| Sends from your own number | Yes | Yes |
| Merge tags | Yes | Yes |
| Mac | Yes | Yes |
| iPhone and iPad | Not yet | Yes |
| Android | Not yet | Yes |
| Not yet | Yes | |
| Shows recipient photographs before sending | Yes | No |
| Contacts stay on your machine | Yes | Partly — syncs via account |
| Email open and click tracking | Yes, on Pro | No |
| Years on the market | New | Over a decade |
| App Store reviews | None yet | About 4,700 at 4.7 stars |
Compiled from Hit Em Up’s own public pages and App Store listing. If anything here has gone out of date, tell us and it will be corrected — an inaccurate comparison helps nobody, least of all us.
Price
We are cheaper monthly and more expensive annually. Both are true.
Hit Em Up’s monthly plan runs at about $20 and its annual plan at about $72, which works out near $6 a month. Human RM is $12 monthly and $120 a year.
So: pay by the month and we are the cheaper of the two by a comfortable margin. Commit for a year and they are, clearly. If price is the deciding factor and you are ready to commit for twelve months, that is a real point in their favour and we are not going to bury it in a footnote.
Both offer a free trial. Theirs is 10 days and asks for no card; ours is 14 days of the entire product with a card saved and nothing charged until it ends. Cancel inside the trial and you pay nothing.
The real difference
One is built for a list. One is built for people you know.
Look at how each product is sold and the difference is plain. Hit Em Up’s landing pages are organised around real estate agents, personal trainers and small business marketing — reaching customers at scale, and doing it well.
Human RM starts somewhere else. The wall of faces on our homepage is not decoration; it is the entire argument. Three hundred and forty is an easy number to be careless with. Three hundred and forty faces looking back at you is not, and every design decision in the app runs from that.
If you are sending appointment reminders to clients, that emphasis buys you nothing and you should buy on features. If you are writing to the people who came to your wedding, it is the whole point.
Questions
What people ask when choosing between the two.
›Which one should I actually buy?
If you need to send from a phone right now, buy Hit Em Up — Human RM runs on the Mac today and no amount of preference changes that this week. If you work from a Mac and care that your contacts never leave it, Human RM is the closer fit. Both send individual one-to-one messages properly, which is the part that matters most.
›Is Hit Em Up any good?
Yes. It has been around for over a decade, it holds about 4.7 stars across several thousand App Store reviews, and it invented the ::firstname:: convention that Human RM also uses. We would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise — a comparison that finds no merit in the alternative is not a comparison.
›What does Hit Em Up do that Human RM does not?
It runs on iPhone, iPad and Android as well as Mac. It sends through WhatsApp. It has a far larger body of reviews and a longer support history. And its annual plan is cheaper than ours. Those are real advantages today and they will decide it for some people. The platform gaps are the ones we are closest to closing; the review history is the one that only time fixes.
›What does Human RM do that Hit Em Up does not?
It shows you every recipient’s photograph before you send, which changes how carelessly you write. It keeps every contact on your own machine with no account and no upload. It includes email open and click tracking on the Pro plan. And it is built around keeping up with people you know rather than marketing to a list.
›Do you support WhatsApp?
Not today, and it is the gap we hear about most from outside the United States — where WhatsApp is simply how people message each other, and an iMessage-and-SMS tool is close to useless. If that describes you, Hit Em Up sends through WhatsApp now and Human RM does not. We would rather tell you that plainly than take your money and disappoint you in week one.
›Can I move my lists across?
Yes, by way of a CSV, which both read. Human RM can also pull directly from the macOS Address Book, so if your people are already in Contacts there may be nothing to move at all.
Try it for two weeks and see which side of that line you are on.
14 days free, the whole thing. Then $12 a month.