SMS message throttling

Phone carriers have sending restrictions that prevent bulk text messages from being sent at one time—here's what you can do

When sending an SMS message to a large group of contacts that have opted into SMS marketing, you may have noticed that it can take 2 to 3 days to complete the send. This is because each phone carrier sets their own restrictions for how many messages can be sent each day. The result is that your messages are broken into batches and sent over a longer period of time. For example:

• T-Mobile - Sends 2000 messages/day.
• AT&T - Sends 75 messages/minute or 4500 per hour.

There are a couple of solutions to help you get your messages out on time:

• Segment your SMS contacts
• Upgrade your SMS plan

Segment your SMS contacts

Segmenting your SMS contacts means breaking them down into smaller lists based on shared characteristics. When you segment your list, you can make your content more targeted so you don't have to send it to as many contacts—only to the ones that will find value in your message.

Here are some ways to get started segmenting your SMS contacts:

• Create a new list for each segment and add the applicable contacts to the list. Your contacts can be on multiple lists at the same time.
• Add tags to your contacts and create a segment based on the tags. 

See how it's done: Looking for more help segmenting your contact list? Check out our video tutorial for different ways to segment your contacts.

Upgrade your SMS plan

If you have a large amount of SMS opted-in contacts that you want to send the same message to and segmenting still leaves you with large list sizes, upgrading your SMS plan can help. Increasing your plan lets you send an increased number of text messages per month.

Upgrade your plan: To reduce the effect of throttling, we recommend choosing the 2,500 to 5,000 SMS message tier or higher.

Questions?