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Bulk SMS Marketing - SMS Reminders - SMS Integration
How many characters can I send in an SMS?
There are 2 kinds of SMS:
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Standard message - contains only characters from the GSM Basic Character Set (see table below)
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Unicode message - If a message contains any characters that aren’t in the GSM 03.38 basic character set, the message type will be treated as unicode. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38).
Long Messages
A standard SMS message has a maximum of 160 characters including spaces, carriage returns, line feeds etc.
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It is possible to send longer messages, however please be aware that exceeding 160 characters will constitute a ‘second’ message.
The end user will see this as 1 long (concatenated) message on their handset.
When a message is longer than 160 characters, this is referred to as a multi-part message as it contains multiple messages (or multiple-parts).
The total SMS limit then becomes 153 characters per message-part as the phone requires 7 characters to tell it that a message-part is part 1 of 2, part 2 of 2 etc.
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Standard English Characters:
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1 – 160 characters = 1 Message
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161 – 306 characters = 2 Messages
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307 – 459 characters = 3 Messages
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460 – 612 characters = 4 Messages
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613 – 765 characters = 5 Messages
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766 – 918 characters = 6 Messages
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919 – 1071 characters = 7 Messages
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1072 – 1224 characters = 8 Messages
Non-GSM (Unicode) characters:
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1 – 70 characters = 1 Message
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71 – 134 characters = 2 Messages
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135 – 201 characters = 3 Messages
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202 – 268 characters = 4 Messages
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269 – 335 characters = 5 Messages
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336 – 402 characters = 6 Messages
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403 – 469 characters = 7 Messages
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470 – 536 characters = 8 Messages
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GSM Basic Character Set
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38
Note: Line breaks/carriage returns count as 2 characters.
GSM Extended Character set
The following characters are also available, but they are counted as two characters in the SMS message rather than one:
| , ^ , € , { , } , [ , ] , ~ , \
Can I send Emojis?
Yes, provided that the recipient network supports it. If the recipient network doesn't support them, they will be stripped out. Emojis are counted as 2 unicode characters each.
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes, spaces do count as characters.
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