Prerequisites
- Create an SMS Template — The counter lives in the editor
SMS Message Length and Parts
160 characters, unless one character says otherwise.
SMS is charged per part, not per message. A long message is split into parts, sent separately and reassembled on the handset — the recipient sees one message, and you are charged for each part.
How many characters fit in a part depends entirely on which characters you used. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong in an SMS template, and the editor's counter now reports it directly.
Characters per part
| Character set | Single part | Each part when split | When it applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 160 characters | 153 characters | Everything in the message is basic Latin text, digits, common punctuation and line breaks. |
| Unicode | 70 characters | 67 characters | The message contains at least one character outside that set — an emoji, a curly quote, an accent, an en dash. |
Warning: The character set applies to the whole message, not to the offending character. One emoji in a 100-character message does not cost you one character — it takes the limit from 160 to 70, making a one-part message into a two-part one.
Worked examples
| Message | Characters | Parts | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain confirmation | 140 | 1 | Standard text, under 160. |
| Plain confirmation | 170 | 2 | Over 160, so it splits — and each part now holds 153, not 160. |
| Same message with one emoji | 100 | 2 | Unicode, so the limit is 70. Shorter than the 140-character version and costs twice as much. |
| Message with a curly apostrophe | 65 | 1 | Unicode, but still under 70. The apostrophe costs nothing here — it would if the message grew past 70. |
Characters that switch a message to Unicode
Emoji
— Any emoji, including the small ones that look like punctuation.
Curly quotes and apostrophes
— The most common accidental cause. Word processors replace straight quotes with curly ones automatically, so text pasted from a document often carries them invisibly.
Accented letters
— A contact's name with an accent in the template text does it. A name arriving through a smart tag can do it at send time, where the counter cannot warn you.
En and em dashes, ellipsis
— Also inserted automatically by word processors in place of hyphens and three dots.
Tip: If the counter says Unicode and you did not intend it, retype the punctuation by hand rather than hunting for the character. Straight quotes and plain hyphens typed directly into the box are standard characters.
What the counter does not include
Expanded smart tags
— {contacts.fname} is 17 characters in the editor and becomes the contact's actual name when sent. A long name, or an accented one, can push the real message over a boundary the counter said you were inside.
A signature added at send
— Depending on how the message is sent, a sign-off may be appended. These run around 40 characters and will often add a part to a message that was close to the limit.
Opt-out wording you add later
— If compliance wording is added outside the template, it counts towards the same limit.
Info: A single message cannot exceed 1,600 characters. The counter warns you as you approach it, and a message over the limit is refused at send time rather than truncated. Anything near that length is the wrong channel.
