SMS deliverability
The proportion of sent SMS messages that are actually delivered to a recipient handset.
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The proportion of sent SMS messages that are actually delivered to a recipient handset.
SMS deliverability measures how many of the messages you send actually arrive. It is distinct from send volume: a platform will happily accept and bill for a message aimed at a disconnected number that can never be delivered.
Deliverability is dragged down by several things at once — invalid and disconnected numbers, landlines that cannot receive texts, carrier spam filtering, unregistered A2P traffic, and content that trips keyword filters.
Sending to numbers that cannot receive messages is doubly costly. You pay for the attempt, and the resulting failure rate feeds into how carriers score your traffic, which degrades delivery for the messages that would otherwise have landed.
Related terms
- List hygiene — Keeping a contact list accurate and current by removing or flagging unusable records.
- Soft bounce — A temporary message delivery failure that may succeed on a later retry.
- 10DLC — The US carrier framework for sending registered application-to-person SMS from a 10-digit local number.
- Line type — The classification of a phone number as mobile, landline, VOIP, or invalid.