What are SMS credits?
A credit is a unit of measurement of your Goodkind text messaging usage. Credits are used when messages are sent and received. Credits can only be used for sending to Canada and US phone numbers. Additional fees will apply for sending messages to other country codes.
SMS uses a technology that is largely unchanged from the days when you had a good old Nokia phone. While the world has moved on, the underlying technology of carriers hasn't changed much. This means that adding Emojis into your messages or receiving a reaction to your message (and vice versa) can compromise your overall sending credits.
Credit and Character Limits
When you use a singular Emoji in your text it may appear as only 1 character, but telephone companies (those who carry your SMS message), treat it differently. In reality, a text with an emoji (an emoji is a ‘unicode’ character) is counted as 70 characters and 1 credit. A text without emojis, special characters, links, pictures or other multimedia can have lengths of up to 160 characters.
The longer your message is, the more characters are used.
💡 Important Tip
Be conscious of the length of your text messages. Emojis may appear as only 1 character, but carriers count every emoji as 70 characters. Texts that do not include special characters (i.e., emojis) have a limit of 160 characters.
Longer messages (> 160 characters, or those with emojis) are broken up into parts by the carriers. In doing so, they add what is called a ‘header’ to indicate the sequence of the message parts when it is re-assembled (automatically) as a single message for the end user. The header is invisible, but it makes your message longer, therefore increasing the cost to deliver (via the number of credits used).
Goodkind SMS Credit Pricing
As a result, all Goodkind charges related to SMS credits is determined by the carriers who actually deliver the message. Goodkind will not charge customers any additional fees or credits other than what the carriers bill us.
If you need to check how many credits your SMS will cost, refer to this app to check the number of credits your SMS message contains. The number of segments in this case will be the number of credits that Goodkind will charge for any given message.
Other Key Pointers:
If you are a Goodkind video messaging customer, any sending (or replies) pertaining to your video campaigns are separate.
The minimum order quantity of phone numbers is 3.
If you exceed your purchased credits of up to 100,000, your Goodkind SMS campaigns and messages will still be sent, and an invoice will be generated for the following month.
Carriers require platforms to indicate the types of messages that will be delivered. Goodkind is an enrolment conversion platform and is not authorized to deliver messages outside of marketing purposes. Goodkind SMS cannot be used for crisis communication or campus wide alerting (e.g., active shooter on campus, urgent weather warnings, etc.).
At Goodkind, we are committed to providing the best possible value for your texting campaigns, and the best possible experience for your team. If you have any questions about your bill or pricing, please contact your Goodkind account manager.