Mass messages and confirmation messages are limited to a maximum of 6 segments because telephony providers filter messages with too much content. Providers may also split messages into segments, which can cause your clients to receive them out of order.

The text communication best practices we recommend in English are as follows:

  • Create a text message in as few segments as possible.

    • 1 segment = 1 text message

  • Avoid accents, punctuation symbols, and emojis, as telephony providers may count them as additional characters, making the message visually harder to understand — for example: (á = a'; emojis: 😊). We understand this is not grammatically ideal, but it is visually easier to read.

  • If you have a very long message to share, you can share a link to the detailed information instead.

    • You can share that link with us so we can convert it into one that follows messaging best practices and is less likely to be filtered by providers.

This is why we have reduced the segment count to 6 — to prevent messages from being filtered and arriving out of order to your clients.

Six segments are approximately 900 characters. On the other hand, if you write certain special characters (such as accents), the segments become smaller, and in that case the limit is 402 characters.

Individual messages are not being limited since they are not sent as a "blast" (many messages sent at the same time), which makes it less likely for the telephony provider to filter them or deliver them out of order.

Related articles