Your AXL numbers can send and receive texts, so you can message customers from the same number they call. Before a number can text, mobile carriers require a registration of your business. Without it, messages are rejected or silently filtered, which is worse than a rejection. Calls don't need any registration.
Which Registration You Need
- US and Canadian local numbers need a paid business registration (10DLC).
- US and Canadian toll-free numbers get a free verification instead.
- Numbers in any other country need only a short form about who is sending.
A business is registered once. Adding another number to an existing registration is free, with no new application and no second monthly fee.
What It Costs
For a US or Canadian local number:
- $13.00 now for registering your business with the carriers, plus $39.00 for the first three months of registration.
- After that, $13.00 a month while SMS stays on. Switch it off and the monthly charge stops.
- Extended Business Check, $52.00 one-time (recommended): a standard registration is approved but kept slow, about one text per second and about 2,000 texts a day. The extended check is an independent review of your business that gives it a trust score: the higher it is, the faster you can send and the more texts per day.
The charges are taken from the real money on your balance; bonuses and the credit limit can't be used. A review usually takes a few business days, and calls on the number keep working throughout.
Turn On SMS
- On the Numbers tab, turn on the SMS switch on the number card.
- If your account is already registered, choose the registration to add the number to. Otherwise, or to register a separate brand, read the charges, tick I understand these charges and click Continue.
- Fill in the form about your business and how you text customers. Fill with AI drafts the descriptions from a few answers; check them before sending.
The SMS Registration tab shows each registration with its status, the numbers it covers and what it costs. If the form is incomplete, the tab says how many fields are left; carriers reject incomplete forms. Numbers that can text but aren't covered by any registration are listed under Numbers Without SMS.
Texting
Team members with SMS permission on a number share one inbox for it. Texts appear in Communications → Chat like other conversations, and you can write from the phone window. Texts are billed per segment: 160 Latin characters, or 70 with Cyrillic or emoji.
MMS (picture messages) works once SMS is approved: it uses the same registration. Turn it on with the MMS switch on the number card.
To send texts to many contacts at once, use a toll-free number. See "Phone Numbers".