SMS Messaging
SMS messaging gives you the ability to send SMS messages via plain text email or our API. You can also receive replies from the recipient and view these in our app and in your email account. This service is ideal for customers who wish to include an SMS communications method and would like to manage this through our dashboard. There are specific terms of service when sending SMS messages.
Your account has a monthly message limit that can be customized to your sending requirements. This limit starts at 50, and increases to an initial limit of 1,000 once your account has been fully activated. To request a higher limit, contact our support team. If you attempt to send messages after you’ve reached your limit, the messages will be queued and sent when your account allows this.
Enabling SMS Messaging
1. Navigate to "Sending > SMS Messaging", then click "Continue".
2. Choose if you would like to send SMS Messages from a dedicated number or use a generic/shared number at no additional cost. A USA dedicated number is required to send SMS messages to the USA or Canada.
- Shared numbers: by default, SMS messages are sent through a shared pool of usually 4-digit phone numbers.
- Dedicated numbers (also known as a virtual or static number): a unique phone number that is exclusively for your use. You can select United States ($5/month), United Kingdom ($10/month), or Australia ($10/month) for a dedicated number, but other countries are also available upon request.
3. The "Socially Aware Sending" option is there to restrict when SMS messages can be sent. Simply enter the hours and timezone when SMS messages are allowed to be delivered. All messages sent outside this time will be queued until this time period begins.
4. If you wish to purchase a dedicated number, go to "Sending > SMS Messaging > Settings" and click "Manage your dedicated numbers" and "View numbers to purchase". Select the country, number and click "Activate number" at the bottom of the page. You can then set it as your default sender number under "General settings" - this means when you send a message, it will be sent via that particular phone number. Please note that if you send to a country outside your dedicated number’s country code, the message will be sent through a shared pool of numbers.
Sending an 'Email to SMS' message
Once you have set up SMS messaging, you are ready to start sending emails as SMS messages:
1. Compose the email.
2. Make sure you are sending the email using your SMTP2GO account (so we know it's coming from you), then send it to “xxxxxxxxx@sms.smtp2go.com”. Replace the x’s with the recipient's phone number including the country code e.g. 15126436337@sms.smtp2go.com or 442000000@sms.smtp2go.com. You can optionally put a '+' symbol at the start of the email address.
If sending to the USA, don't forget to put the country code 1 at the start!
3. Navigate to "Settings > SMS Messaging > Sent" to display the message that was just sent.
4. Navigate to "Settings > SMS Messaging > Received" to display any SMS replies.
You can also test sending an SMS using the "Send a test message" feature on the SMS Messaging page.
'Email to SMS' Settings
- Email to SMS Enabled - If your account has somehow become compromised, or you otherwise need to immediately stop all SMS messages from sending, deselect this option.
- Message Limit - This setting limits the number of SMS messages that will be generated from a single email, so that you do not accidentally send an excessive number of messages. A single SMS message is 160 characters, and, depending on the message limit that you set, if the message exceeds 160 characters multiple SMS messages will be sent. If you attempt to send an email that has more characters than the total number of characters shown in this setting, the email will be rejected and you'll receive an email advising you about this.
- Email Subject Line - Choose to include or exclude the email's subject line in your SMS content.
- Forward Replies - Add a particular email address here to receive email notifications when your recipient responds.
- SMS End Tag - Choose to have a custom SMS end tag. Any email content after the tag will be ignored. This is useful for cutting off email signatures from text messages and ensuring unwanted content doesn't become inadvertently included.
- SMS Bounce Notifications - Enable to receive bounce notifications when an email to SMS bounces and choose whether that goes to the original sender or a designated email address.
Sending an SMS message using the API
More advanced users may prefer sending SMS messages via our API.
Details of our SMS API are available here.
Opt-outs
When sending a message, it may be a legal requirement to provide recipients with the option to opt-out from receiving further messages from you.
Our system is configured to automatically unsubscribe anyone who replies with any of the following keywords: STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, or UNSUB.
An example opt-out/unsubscribe sentence you could include in your messages is:
Reply Stop to opt out
SMS Pricing
Pricing is per SMS and displayed in USD.
| Location | |
|---|---|
| US / Canada | $0.012 |
| United Kingdom | $0.06 |
| Ireland | $0.08 |
| Australia / NZ | $0.07 |
| Everywhere else | $0.08 |
SMS usage is billed monthly, regardless of the plan you are on.
Restricted Countries
Some countries are blocked for receiving SMS messages to help protect you from the risk of financial pain resulting from abuse by autobots, and artificially inflated messaging. These countries are mentioned below.
Please note that MMS messaging is not supported in this version release.