Skip to content

SMS Bundles

Important

Enterprise level accounts should refer to the contractual terms in regards to unit volume and additional SMS bundle prices, if applicable.

How many SMS units can I send each month?

Your LoopSpark account receives 2,500 SMS units for free each month, unused free units do not roll over month to month. While the majority of our clients send fewer than 2,500 monthly units, we understand some business require higher volume, especially during seasonal promotions.

For any business that requires more than 2,500 SMS units during a given billing period, additional SMS bundles will automatically be purchased and applied to your account.

What are SMS bundles?

SMS bundles are additional SMS credits that will automatically be billed to your account should you require more than 2,500 units in a given billing period.

We want to ensure your account always has enough SMS credits to continue discussions with your members. Once your account has used all remaining SMS credits (free and paid bundles), an additional SMS bundle will be purchased and added to your account, ensuring no interruption to SMS automations and discussions with clients.

How much do SMS bundles cost?

SMS bundles cost $15 and provide an additional 1,000 SMS unit credits. These bundles will automatically be purchased when your account has used all remaining SMS credits (free and paid bundle credits).

Purchased SMS bundle credits DO roll over. Unused paid SMS credits will remain in your account for you to use during future billing periods where you require more than 2,500 SMS units.

Where can I view my current SMS usage?

You can view your monthly Free Bundle and Paid bundle usage and remaining credits by navigating to Settings -> Studio Usage.

What is an SMS unit?

The standard limit for a single SMS message is 160 characters; however, most modern phones and networks use “message concatenation”: large messages are divided into individual SMS messages (called “units”) and then re-created at the receiving end.

To ensure higher SMS delivery rates and better customer experience, LoopSpark has placed limits on SMS character length to:

  • Automations: 2 units
  • SMS sent through event rosters: 2 units
  • SMS sent through client profile: 3 units

Depending on the content of your SMS, the message can be encoded in 2 ways, which will impact the total character count per unit:

GSM:

GSM 03.38 is the original character set designed for SMS is limited to 160 7-bit characters, i.e., 1120 bits, or 140 bytes, and can only encompass 128 different characters, thanks to that 7-bit limit. So if you want to include characters including emojis, extended Latin or non-Latin scripts, you’ll need to use UCS-2. GSM messages also require 7 characters per unit for encoding on the network side, providing a total of 153 characters per unit.

  • Automation Limit: 306 characters (2 GSM units)
  • Client profile limit: 459 characters (3 GSM units)
  • Event roster limit: 306 characters (2 GSM units)

UCS-2:

Unicode character including emojis, special characters and paragraph spacing will cause your message to be encoded as USC-2, which limits the total unit character count to 70. UCS-2 messages also require 7 characters per unit for encoding on the network side, providing a total of 63 characters per unit:

  • Automation Limit: 126 characters (2 UCS-2 units)
  • Client profile limit: 189 characters (3 UCS-2 units)
  • Event roster limit: 126 characters (2 UCS-2 units)