How does Emitrr calculate character length for mass texts?

How do Carriers Calculate Character Length for Mass Texts?

The text messaging charges are dependent on the type of message encoding. There are two types of message encoding which are: GSM-7 and UCS-2.

Let’s see what constitutes these encoding methods in simple terms:

1. Any message that contains only text characters falls under GSM-7.

2. Any message that contains emojis and special characters falls under UCS-2.

3. A text message that is a combination of both text and emojis/special characters will also fall under the UCS-2 category.

You can find the list of UCS-2 special characters here.

NOTE:
If you use Unicode characters (emojis and special characters), the message encoding type will change from GSM-7 to Unicode and the message segment length will reduce to 70 characters.

Message	Type	Characters used in message	Encoding	Max characters/ message
Hello – good morning	Text	GSM Standard	GSM-7	160
	Emoji	Unicode	UCS-2	70
	Unicode	Unicode	UCS-2	70

How do Carriers (ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon) Charge for Text Messages?

Text message charges are based on the number of segments in which the message gets delivered.

For a GSM-7 encoding, a text message containing less than 160 characters will cost you 1 credit. A message with characters between 160 and 306 will be segmented into two and will cost you 2 credits.

For UCS-7 however, a text message containing less than 70 characters will cost you 1 credit and a message with characters between 70 and 137 will be counted as 2 credits.

You can refer to the table below to understand how each message will be segmented based on the number of characters.

NOTE:
The second message segment will only have 153 characters because 7 of the 160 characters will be used for a header in the backend. This header will help the carrier identify that the message segments need to be sent together. All the subsequent message segments also follow this pattern.

Message Length (GSM-7)	Message Length (UCS-2)	Segments (in numbers)	Charged as
0 – 160 characters	0 – 70 characters	1	Single credit
161 – 306 characters	71 – 137 characters	2	Two credits
307 – 459 characters	138 – 204 characters	3	Three credits
460 – 612 characters	205 – 271 characters	4	Four credits
613 – 765 characters	272 – 338 characters	5	Four credits
766 – 918 characters	339 – 405 characters	6	Four credits
919 – 1,071 characters	406 – 472 characters	7	Four credits
1,072 – 1,224 characters	473 – 539 characters	8	Four credits
1,225 – 1,377 characters	540 – 606 characters	9	Four credits
1,378 – 1,530 characters	607 – 673 characters	10	Four credits

Images are charged in the following manner:

Image	Text	Charged as
1 Image	No Text	Four credits
1 Image	<=160 Character	Four credits
1 Image	>160 <=306 Character	Four credits

FAQ's

1. How is text message length calculated?

Each character in a message is looked into to determine its encoding type and overall message length and calculates the total number of segments in the message.

2. What is GSM-7 AND UCS-2?

GSM-7 and UCS-2 are types of message encodings. A message is a GSM-7 type if it only uses text characters. A message is a UCS-2 type if it uses only emojis or emojis with text. The type of message encoding will determine message segmentation, which in turn will determine how much a message will cost.

3. What happens when there are special characters and text in a message?

The message will fall under UCS-2 encoding and hence a message with more than 70 characters will be segmented into 2.

4. What will happen if my message is less than 160 characters but contains an emoji?

Regardless of whether the message is less than 160 characters the presence of emoji would make it fall under the UCS-2 category.

5. What happens if my message is too long?

If your message is too long Emitrr will send the SMS as an MMS so that it saves you cost as the credits will be capped at 4.

6. What if I send an image and a text together? How many credits will be used?

4 credits will be used when you send an image and text together.