FAQ
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions. If you don’t find a question on here that you need answered, please let us know and we will get back to you.
General Questions
Yes, but this feature is only active for countries that support it and also have SMS-enabled numbers available. So if your country has SMS-enabled numbers available and also supports sending from an alphanumeric sender ID, you will see this option from the Bulk SMS page where you can enter your own 11 character sender ID to send from.
Keep in mind an alphanumeric sender ID is only used for one way communication. Recipients of messages with an alphanumeric sender ID will not be able to respond to you.
Customers receiving text messages with your alphanumeric sender ID should have opted in to your service and been informed on how to opt out. You must offer your users the ability to opt out by writing to your support team, calling your support phone line, or texting STOP to your actual SMS-enabled number. We recommend that you provide your users with a clear description in your terms of services or when they initially sign-up.
Countries you will be able to send from an alphanumeric sender ID:
AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, DENMARK, ESTONIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, HONG KONG, IRELAND, ISRAEL, ITALY, LITHUANIA, NETHERLANDS, NORWAY, POLAND, SPAIN, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
Technically there is really no limit, however these are long code numbers and mobile carriers are a little more cautious letting someone send thousands of SMS messages at 1 time for SPAM reasons. It’s best to use toll-free numbers when sending to larger groups of people. See here: Long Codes vs Toll-free Numbers.
With Text Platform, we have many safety measures built in to help avoid any potential issues.
1. You have the capability to assign multiple numbers to an account and then rotate through those numbers simply by ticking a checkbox! This provides a good safety measure in that to mitigate potential problems, it’s best to distribute the load of your SMS traffic, so that SMS messages with identical or similar contents are sent from as many different outgoing phone numbers as possible.
2. You have the capability to spin the text of your messages so that your message content varies with each outgoing message.
3. You can throttle the sending rate of your messages so that your messages get sent at a slower rate. Per carrier restriction, the fastest (default setting) you can send SMS on 1 long code is 1 SMS/second. However, you can slow that down to exercise extra caution. The slowest setting will send at rate of 10 SMS per minute or 1 SMS every 6 seconds.
Mobile carriers are a little more cautious letting someone send thousands of SMS messages at 1 time for SPAM reasons.
As are a result, the Text Platform pauses 1 second after each SMS. This slows down script execution to enable your campaign to be send out without issues.
For example: To send out to a database of 10,800 mobile numbers will take 3 hours.
Text Platform charges per SMS we send for you, not per API call. This means that if your message is longer than 160 characters, the character limit for an SMS, you will be charged for two messages (or more).
Also, be aware that if you are sending SMS in Unicode, your character count per SMS will be 70 characters for a one-part message, due to the fact that each UCS2 character requires 2 bytes. The 7-byte header for concatenated messages will also apply when sending in excess of one message. As a result, a two-part Unicode message has a limit of 134 characters and a three-part Unicode message has a limit of 201 characters.
TopTip: If you have a message prepared in a Microsoft Word Document or email, copy and paste the message into a TXT file first. Save the TXT file. Then copy and paste the message from the TXT file into the Text Platform. This method removes any code or unicode from the text which could result in higher charges.
The maximum number of characters per single message depends on the encoding; for example:
160 characters for 7-bit encoding (e.g. latin-1/9 and GSM8)
140 characters for 8-bit encoding (binary)
70 characters for 16-bit encoding (Unicode)
The maximum number of characters per concatenated message is slightly reduced due to the inclusion of concatenation headers; for example:
152 characters for 7-bit encoding (e.g. latin-1/9 and GSM8)
133 characters for 8-bit encoding (binary)
66 characters for 16-bit encoding (Unicode)
There are a few very important reasons why you need a two-way SMS-enabled phone number for marketing reasons.
- One of the ways customers join or opt-in to your list is by texting in a keyword to your number. This is how they can also opt-out of receiving future messages from you.
- Gather feedback from your customers instantly through marketing campaigns, polls, contests, and promotions.
- Allow customers to text in anything to your number and you can engage them in a 2-way chat.
- Collect your subscribers’ names, emails and birthdays so you can personalize future text messages, add their email addresses to your email autoresponders, and send them your customized birthday SMS wishes.
Sales Questions
Text Platform works on a prepaid basis. You can purchase credits online via Credit or Debit card.
Should you prefer to request a quotation to purchase before making payment, please email [email protected]. When requesting a quotation, please include your username, email address and the number of credits you would like to purchase.
No, they don’t.
Text Platform SMS credits do NOT expire. This means that your SMS credits will be available in your Text Platform account for as long as you need them.
We provide invoices for all your SMS credit purchases.
These are available in the dashboard of your Text Platform account. Any invoices related to other services will be emailed to you on initiation or renewal of those services. Please note that these invoices do not appear in the Commerce section of your Text Platform account.
You, as the Text Platform account holder, pay for failed messages, that is; messages that were not delivered to a contact in your database.
There are two reasons for this:
• The networks charge us for all submissions regardless of the status.
• We expend more resources in handling failed messages as we re-try sending these messages to the network before reporting it as a failed message.