SMS Billing

Drip has simple, transparent tiered pricing for SMS, starting at $39/month. You can find the various pricing tiers on your billing page and see a sample of the SMS billing tiers in the below table- reach out to Support with any additional questions. Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t pass on any carrier fees or hidden fees onto your bill. You will start at a billing tier during each billing cycle, and as your SMS list grows and your message volume increases, your tiered monthly price will adjust accordingly. It should feel similar to how you pay for email on Drip.

Your SMS Message Count

The number of allotted SMS messages within your tier represents the amount of SMS messages you can send to your subscribers before you move up a tier. An emoji counts as 3 characters. We don’t automatically charge you for an MMS message just because you want to add a little flair to your SMS marketing. 

Here are the basics of what you can expect from Drip:

• A text-only message containing 160 characters or less counts as 1 message against your tier allotment.
• For text messages over 160 characters, they are split into message segments of 153-160 characters each. 
• This is done by the major mobile carriers to help messages get delivered faster across their networks:

Drip Pro-Tip - If you are building an SMS message and you see it is 460 characters or longer, you should either:

• Try to shorten your message copy
• Add a picture and send it as an MMS
• This will save you on message allotment while also delivering better overall results for your marketing efforts

Your SMS Sending Number 

Your local sending number is where all of your texts will come from. This is the number you obtained during your SMS Setup. Drip does not charge you to have an SMS sending number. 

For most users, you will only need to use one SMS sending number to reach your audience. This is considered best practice with the major mobile networks. Once you can send 3,000 messages in one day, Drip will alert you to register as an A2P 10DLC user, which will greatly increase your SMS throughput. 

Do you want to transfer your existing SMS service over to Drip?

If you currently use SMS elsewhere and want to bring you existing SMS number over to Drip, contact our experts to discuss: 

• Porting over an existing local SMS enabled sending number
• Porting over an existing short code
• Verify that your business owns the short code and not your current SMS service provider

Drip takes an active role in ensuring all of our SMS users stay in compliance with the latest rules and regulations. This way, you can focus on creating great SMS marketing. If you’d like more information on SMS compliance, click here.

How often should I send SMS campaigns? Will I go over my tier sending message limits often?

Our SMS billing tiers are designed to be guardrails to help ensure that your account stays within the sending frequency of best practices. The ratio of SMS subscribers to message allotment within our tiers scales as your list grows to accommodate more sophisticated segmentation and workflows.

The industry standard for SMS messaging is evolving away from mass blast SMS campaigns into more personalized communication. If you think of email sending as a 1-to-many channel, think of SMS as a 1-to-1 channel. Developing personalized messages in automations will ensure your messages aren’t filtered as spam by the major mobile carriers.