question

Susan Pieroni avatar image
Susan Pieroni asked Mike Stowe answered

SMS Cost Per Segment

I am trying to find out what the cost per SMS Message is and if there is a limit to the number of texts that can be sent on a monthly basis. In looking at the SMS Log I am seeing costs of .0085, .0017 and .0013 for each segment but am not sure how those values are generated. We do not subscribe to a SMS plan since our texting volume is fairly low.


Any insight would be appreciated.


Thank you

sms and text messaging
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1 Answer

Mike Stowe avatar image
Mike Stowe answered

Hi Susan,
The way that mobile carriers bill SMS is per "segment" or what they consider a message. Often these segments are combined to appear as one message on a mobile device (or in the RingCentral app).

The way segments are defined is a little complicated, as it is based on numerous factors including the type of characters being used (this impacts encoding type), the number of characters, and if additional headers (meta data) is required.

More information including examples of the character sets, and how segments are defined and billed is available here:

https://support.ringcentral.com/article-v2/Character-limits-for-text-messages.html?brand=RingCentral&product=MVP&language=en_US

In terms of the 0.013 cost that you are seeing, that is likely a MMS message (includes an attachment such as a picture). MMS is also billed differently than SMS, but gives you more flexibility and the ability to include more characters in a single message.

I hope this helps and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to let me know,
Mike

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