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Messaging Agents

Are you ready to register for 10DLC?

If your agent sends SMS from a US 10-digit number you have to register before carriers will deliver anything. Five questions, then what you must register, what it costs and what to have ready. The fees are trivial; the delay lands on your launch date, which is the reason to start this before you finish building.

Where are the people you are messaging?

A2P 10DLC is a United States carrier framework. It does not follow you abroad.

What kind of number will you send from?

Each type has a different approval path, cost and throughput ceiling.

What will the agent mostly send?

Campaigns are registered against a stated use case and assessed on sample messages.

Does the agent message people first?

Consent is the part of registration most often failed, and initiating raises the bar.

Roughly how many messages a day?

Throughput ceilings differ by number type and decide whether one number is enough.

What everyone sending US SMS needs

  1. 1

    STOP and HELP handling, and quiet hours

    Not optional and not a feature you add later. Opt-out must work on the first message and every message after it, and messaging outside reasonable local hours is a compliance problem regardless of registration status.

What this is and is not

This reports what published sources say about a carrier registration process. It is not legal advice, we are not lawyers, and consent requirements under the TCPA are a legal question rather than a procedural one. Where we have not sourced a figure, notably short code pricing and 10DLC approval timelines, this says so instead of estimating.

The figures come from our 10DLC guide, which cites and dates each one. If your provider quotes something different, believe your provider: several of them absorb registration into a bundled price, and a managed iMessage API may remove the question entirely. See what the channels cost.