Standard SMS

A standard SMS is 160 characters in length.

You can send longer messages using a process called concatenation. We use special characters to join the SMS together and deliver them as one message.

Each SMS is charged separately.

Example: If you have a message that is 2 SMS in length, if you send it to 500 clients you will be charged for 1000 messages.

Due to the use of characters to join the messages after the first message, all parts are reduced to 153 characters.

The cost of each SMS is dependant on what subscription plan you are on. Click here to learn more about the cost of sending SMS.

Unicode

Characters such as emojis and non-latin alphabets like Chinese and Arabic use what is known as Unicode. Each character uses a larger amount of information, thus allowing a maximum of 70 characters per text.

Depending on how many Unicode characters are used, this will make a noticeable effect on the final character count. So you pay for each 70 instead of each 160 as with standard text. 

Once a message has even a single Unicode character, the whole character count is reduced.