Understand how SMS characters are calculated because this can affect the number of credits you use when sending a message.
A standard SMS message has a maximum of 160 characters using one credit. Long messages use two credits, three credits and more.
SMS campaigns with large groups of contacts can use a big budget when you use long SMS content. So better to understand how SMS characters are calculated and charged.
Standard (GSM) characters: 160 characters
- After 160 characters, your message will become "multi-part" with a limit of 153 characters per part.
Standard English Characters:
1 – 160 characters = 1 Message
161 – 306 characters = 2 Messages
307 – 459 characters = 3 Messages
460 – 612 characters = 4 Messages
613 – 765 characters = 5 Messages
766 – 918 characters = 6 Messages
919 – 1071 characters = 7 Messages
1072 – 1224 characters = 8 Messages
Special (Unicode) characters: 70 characters
- After 70 characters your message will become "multi-part" with a limit of 67 characters per part.
- 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).
Non-GSM (Unicode) characters:
1 – 70 characters = 1 Message
71 – 134 characters = 2 Messages
135 – 201 characters = 3 Messages
202 – 268 characters = 4 Messages
269 – 335 characters = 5 Messages
336 – 402 characters = 6 Messages
403 – 469 characters = 7 Messages
470 – 536 characters = 8 Messages
The reason behind the character limits to change for multi-part messages?
When you send a long message, some characters get used up by invisible headers and footers, which are used to identify which part of the message is being sent (e.g. Part 1 of 2).
Avoid accidental Unicode characters with Guni content Intelligent.
When copying & pasting message content from an external source like a Word document, it's possible your message might contain Unicode characters without it being obvious, particularly if you've copied across any paragraph formatting like "tab" or "whitespace" characters.
Guni identifies unicode in your message and warns you before sending an SMS. You can easily replace them with GSM characters and reduce the risk of spending a huge budget on your campaign.
