United States of America (USA)

Updated 1 year ago

Options
Feature Restrictions

The USA has very specific messaging restrictions and a direct connection is necessary in order to ensure message delivery to the numerous networks. ClickSend uses an extremely high-quality, direct connection in order to deliver your SMS to the USA.

All SMS sent to the US must originate from a pre-approved number that is associated with your account. Replies are supported.

Options

Shared Long Codes

This is the default option. This should not be used for marketing messages. Since the numbers used are shared with other clients, this may affect your deliverability. This option is being phased out and you must purchase a dedicated number.

10DLC

With 10DLC (10-digit long codes), you can send high volumes of messages from a local number. It has been specially designed and sanctioned for business messaging. We’ll help you submit information about your brand and use case to receive a trust score which will determine how many messages you can send per day.

Pre-existing long codes will be required to update to 10DLC. A 10DLC number is essentially a local 10-digit phone number that can support higher volumes of text messages.

Toll-Free Numbers

Toll-free numbers can support up to 1 message per second, we recommend keeping your transactional messages below 28,000 per day. They are well suited for transactional messages and handset delivery reports are supported.

If you are sending low volume marketing messages the networks are more likely to block message content such as bit.ly URL shorteners.

Do not send the same traffic over multiple Toll-Free Numbers, using multiple Toll-Free numbers is known as snowshoeing and will be blocked by the network.

Dedicated Short Code

Replies are supported. This option gives you the highest level of deliverability and handset delivery reports. Contact us to have this set up on your account, the setup process is 8-12 weeks.

Dedicated Long Codes

This should not be used for marketing messages. Contact your account manager if you would like this set up with a specific area code, it can take 24 hours to assign to your account.

Long codes are being discontinued.

Feature Restrictions

Message length

The top 3 networks can accept multi-part (concatenated) messages (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile). Only Sprint and US Cellular do not accept multi-part messages. We can't guarantee the delivery of multi-part messages to the US since it's outside of our control. It's best to run your own testing for your specific use case.

Using your own mobile number

Unfortunately, you can't use your own mobile number in the US. You can only set the sender ID (from number) as a ClickSend number you've purchased.

Alpha sender ID (from name)

Unfortunately, the USA doesn't support an alpha sender ID e.g. (MyCompany). This is a network restriction and it outside of our control.

MMS Subject

The MMS subject line is not supported in the US and will be stripped out before sending.

Long virtual numbers

The feature restrictions for long-virtual-number originators are as follows:

Limited numeric sender only --> In the “from” field you need to specify your pre-approved US virtual number in international format e.g. 18479121345 (available in the Numbers tab). Otherwise, your message will get rejected with reject code 15 Illegal Sender Address - rejected.
Carriers do not send handset delivery receipts. Intermediate DLR (accepted status) will be provided as soon as the message reaches the operator's platform.
Binary and VCard are not supported.
Long/concatenated SMS and Unicode are supported by the US but we cannot guarantee delivery across all the local carriers.
Euro symbol (€) and some accented characters are not supported.
You may send a maximum of 1 SMS per second and per virtual number in the US due to local carriers regulations. If you send messages more quickly, the message(s) will be rejected. If you require higher throughput, you can purchase more numbers and spread your traffic across your numbers. E.g. 10 numbers = 10 SMS per second.
Maximum of 250 messages per day and per long virtual number. If this is exceeded your number will be blocked and will no longer work.
Carriers will expect traffic to be bi-directional.
Repetitive URL's and keywords in the SMS body of long codes will be blocked by the carriers.

Short Codes

Short Code routes support handset delivery receipts, binary and Unicode encoding, long/concatenated messaging on most carriers.
There is no daily maximum of messages per day restriction on our short code routes and higher throughput is supported.
T-Mobile and Sprint users may opt out of receiving messages from short codes to reduce the amount of marketing messages they receive. It is up to them to contact their provider to remove this.

Toll-Free

Toll-Free numbers will not support bit.ly link shorteners. ClickSend has a URL shortener you can use instead with SMS Campaigns.
Do not send the same traffic over multiple Toll-Free Numbers, using multiple Toll-Free numbers is known as snowshoeing and will be blocked by the network.

USA Delivery Issues

If you're having issues with SMS delivery to the US, please contact our 24/7 chat support team.

Sending from virtual numbers to virtual numbers is restricted in the US due to fraud prevention.

Restricted Content

See our restricted content here