What a Broadcast Costs
The charges on a campaign, and the check that happens before you commit.
What It Is
A broadcast can carry two separate charges, and they work differently.
Writing the messages. An intelligent broadcast is charged per contact — currently $0.50 each, for both email and text — and that covers writing that contact's message and reviewing it before it sends. A standard broadcast writes nothing, so it carries no writing charge at all.
Delivering them. Email delivery carries no per-message charge. Text delivery does: it is charged per message at the carrier's rate when the message is delivered. Because that rate depends on the destination, the figure you are shown before sending is an estimate and is labelled as one. Messages that are not delivered are not charged.
Why It Matters
A campaign draws on your balance while it runs, over hours rather than in one transaction. If the balance ran out halfway, you would have a campaign that had reached some of its audience and stopped — and the rest of your account's work would stop with it.
So the cost is worked out and checked before the campaign exists, not discovered as it drains.
How It Works
Scheduling any broadcast opens a confirmation panel. Nothing is created until you confirm there, and Cancel leaves nothing behind.
The panel shows:
- how many contacts will receive the campaign
- the cost of writing the messages, and the per-contact rate it used
- the estimated cost of sending them, for a text campaign
- the campaign total
- your wallet balance, and what is needed to start
Create & Schedule stays disabled until the check passes, and the reason is stated when it does not — the exact shortfall if the balance is short, or that the audience is empty.
Your balance has to cover 1.2 times the campaign total rather than exactly the total. A campaign is never the only thing drawing on your account while it runs: replies come back and get handled, and other work carries on. The headroom is what keeps all of that running alongside the campaign.
Everything on the panel is worked out at the moment you open it, so a page left open for an hour cannot quote you a stale balance.
Examples
An intelligent email campaign to 200 contacts
200 × $0.50 = $100.00 to write and review. Email delivery adds nothing. Your balance needs to be at least $120.00 for the campaign to be allowed to start.
A standard text campaign to 200 contacts
Nothing to write, so no writing charge. The panel shows an estimate for delivery at the carrier rate, and the real charge lands per message as each one is delivered.
A standard email campaign
Neither charge applies, so the panel is a final check on the audience rather than on your balance.
Info: The rate the panel shows is the rate it will charge — both are read from the same place, so the quote and the bill cannot disagree. If no rate is configured for a campaign type, it cannot be scheduled at all; that is treated as a problem to fix rather than as a free campaign.
