Mass texting and bulk SMS broadcast software, personalized per contact at any scale.

What drives the number

What a mass text actually costs, and the two things that change it.

The per-message price is the part everyone compares and the smaller half of the story. What moves a bulk SMS bill is segment count and list size, and only one of those is obvious.

A single SMS segment is 160 characters. Go one character over and the message splits into two segments billed separately, at 153 characters each, because the standard spends the difference on stitching the parts back together. So a 161-character message costs double a 160-character one. Anything that quietly widens a message pushes it over: a long merge field, an emoji, a link that did not get shortened.

Emoji are the trap worth naming. A single emoji switches the whole message to a different character encoding, which cuts the per-segment limit from 160 characters to 70. One smiling face can turn a one-segment message into three. The composer shows the live segment count as you type for exactly this reason.

• Write to 160 and check the counter before the message goes anywhere near a review screen.
• Shorten links, which also makes them measurable.
• Budget by segment, not by message. A 40,000-contact send at two segments is an 80,000-message bill.
• Test on your own staff list first, where a mistake costs nothing.

The same list gets worse every month you do not send to it.

A texting list decays, and the decay is faster than most owners expect. People change numbers. Numbers get reassigned. Interest that was real at opt-in stops being real. None of that is visible from the list itself, which still shows the same count it showed a year ago.

What that means in practice is that a list you have not messaged in six months is not the asset the number suggests. Sending to it cold produces higher opt-out rates, higher carrier filtering, and a meaningful share of messages reaching people who no longer recognize you. The first send after a long silence is the most expensive one you will make, in reputation as well as money.

The programs that hold up treat cadence as maintenance rather than pressure:

• Send regularly enough to stay recognized. Monthly is a floor for most lists. Quarterly is close to starting over each time.
• Segment before you scale. A smaller list that wants the message outperforms a larger one that tolerates it, and it costs less to send.
• Watch the opt-out rate per send, not in total. A rising rate is the earliest honest signal that cadence or targeting has drifted.
• Re-permission rather than assume. If a segment has gone quiet for a long stretch, ask it to confirm before you resume. A smaller confirmed list is worth more than a large stale one, and it is the safer position.

The reason this sits on a mass texting page rather than in a compliance one is that it is not primarily a legal point. It is a cost point. Texting people who no longer want to hear from you is the most expensive thing a bulk SMS program can do, long before anybody complains.

Accepted is not delivered

Why a message the platform accepted still might not arrive.

A bulk send reports back that it went out. That report means the carrier accepted it, which is not the same as a phone displaying it. Carriers filter aggressively, they do it silently, and they do not owe you an explanation. Understanding the handful of things that trigger it is worth more than any amount of message tuning.

• Unregistered sending. The largest single factor. Application-to-person traffic from an unregistered number is the first thing filters throttle. Registration is covered on this site in its own right, and it is the fix that changes delivery rates most.
• Public link shorteners. A shared shortener domain carries the reputation of everybody else using it, including the spam. A branded or dedicated short domain keeps your reputation yours.
• Content that looks like the categories carriers police hardest. Lending, cannabis, gambling and adult content face heavier scrutiny regardless of how legitimate the sender is. If you operate in one, expect it and plan for it.
• Sudden volume from a cold number. Going from nothing to forty thousand messages in an hour on a new number is the exact shape of a spam run. Ramp instead.
• High opt-out or complaint rates. Filters read these as a quality signal. This is where list decay stops being an abstraction and starts costing delivery.

The practical consequence is that deliverability is mostly earned before the send rather than fixed after it. Register the number, warm it gradually, keep the list current, and use a link domain you control. A program doing those four things rarely has a filtering problem worth investigating.

When delivery does drop, look at what changed rather than at the message. A new number, a new shortener, a list segment that had been dormant, or a first send after a long gap will explain most sudden drops. The copy is almost never the cause, which is why rewriting it almost never helps.

The four numbers worth reading after a send.

Most bulk SMS reporting leads with the number sent, which is the least useful figure available: it measures how much you spent, not what happened. Four others tell you whether the send worked.

• Delivery rate. Delivered divided by sent. A healthy program sits high and stays there. A drop is a filtering or list-quality signal and is the first thing to check, because everything below it is measured against a smaller real audience than you think.
• Click rate on the link. The only direct read on whether the offer landed. Worth measuring per segment rather than per send, since one strong segment can hide three weak ones.
• Opt-out rate for this send. Not cumulative. A per-send figure that climbs is the earliest honest warning that cadence or targeting has drifted, and it moves before revenue does.
• Reply volume. Easy to ignore on a broadcast and frequently the most valuable output, because a reply is a person who wants something. A send that generates replies nobody reads is a wasted one.

Read them together rather than separately. A high click rate on a poor delivery rate is a small audience responding well, which is a different problem from a large audience ignoring you, and the two call for opposite responses.