What are rate limits?

Phone numbers have speed and capacity limits on how many texts they can send over a given period of time. These are called throughput or rate limits.

Rate limits for 10DLC registrations

10DLC phone numbers are associated with a registration, and have carrier-specific rate limits based on the legal entity type of the registered organization. While political organizations are effectively exempt from caps, 501(c) non-profits and private entities may be strictly capped on how many texts they can send at a time from a 10DLC registration.

To get more specific: AT&T and T-Mobile have set caps on how many texts can be sent from a 10DLC registration to their subscribers. 

• AT&T caps how many SMS segments / MMS messages you can send per minute to their customers

• T-Mobile caps how many SMS segments / MMS messages you can send per day to their customers, resetting each night at midnight PT

The caps set by the carriers depend on whether your organization has registered as a 527 (political campaign, party, or PAC), 501(c), or private entity. 

• 527s have access to Campaign Verify; registering for 10DLC with Campaign Verify effectively unlocks access to the highest sending speeds. 

• 501(c)s, government organizations, and private entities are subject to background vetting during the registration process, which generates a “trust score”; the caps the organization receives reflect that “trust score”. Note that this cap can be contested with an appeal using IRS forms such as a letter of determination, an 8976 form, a W9 form, etc.

Private entities that receive low AT&T segment-per-minute thresholds won’t be able to send SMS texts at high speeds. Scale to Win staff will reach out if this is the case to discuss solutions with you. For consulting firms, we recommend not registering the firm and only registering individual political, government, or 501(c) clients from individual subaccounts.

Rate limit data in Scale to Win Text

Rate limit information for your registration is surfaced on the "Phone Numbers" page in Scale to Win Text. You can view the registration’s AT&T speed limit and T-Mobile daily combined SMS segment and MMS message limit.

Image above: View the rate limits for a given 10DLC registration on the "Phone Numbers" page in Scale to Win Text.

Rate limit tracker in Spoke

501(c)s and other non-political organizations looking to track daily sends in relation to rate limits can check the “Compliance” page of the registered team (accessible to Owners). The tracker displays the registration’s AT&T speed limit and T-Mobile daily SMS segment limit, and a progress bar showing the number of segments sent that day in relation to the T-Mobile cap. 

Image displaying the rate limit tracker on the “Compliance” page. If you have surpassed your T-Mobile daily limit, you will see an error icon on the left-hand side of the screen.

Should you surpass your T-Mobile limit, the Compliance page will show an error icon in the left-hand menu of your Spoke admin view and the progress bar will turn from green to red. 

As a reminder, 10DLC rate limits are specific to each registration and, if you have subaccounts connected to different registration, may differ from one to the other. 

What happens if I surpass the limits?

If you exceed the carrier limit(s) on T-Mobile, your messages will be undelivered to T-Mobile customers. Messages that exceed your T-Mobile limit will unfortunately fail immediately. As a general rule of thumb, T-Mobile customers make up about a third of every texting list.

Note, however, that it’s not a problem to go over your segment-per-minute limit with AT&T for a short while. Messages are queued, meaning they will be sent out eventually as long as you don’t overfill the queue. Exceeding speed limits on AT&T is an extremely rare occurrence that can occur in peer-to-peer mode, where texters set the pace of sending; blast mode regulates sending speeds to prevent this outcome.

You can see which particular messages failed due to T-Mobile or AT&T caps by exporting your campaign and checking for 4780 or 4781 error codes.

If you wish to retarget contacts affected by rate limiting, please note that you’ll want to wait to text anyone who received a 4780 error code until the next day from a 10DLC phone number, but can use toll-free on that same day without being capped.

Non-politicals: Overcoming the T-Mobile cap

Option 1: Register for toll-free (it’s free!)

If your organization is regularly hitting the T-Mobile daily cap on 10DLC, we recommend registering for a toll-free number. Not only is it free to register, T-Mobile doesn’t cap how many messages can be sent from toll-free. 

Option 2: $500 Special Business Review [not recommended]

If you need to use local phone numbers for your big sends, you can technically bypass the T-Mobile daily segment cap on 10DLC by going through a “special business review”. This involves paying $500 to a third party to be reviewed and waiting possibly a year or more until the cap is lifted for your organization. 

Please note that paying the $500 does not guarantee that T-Mobile will lift the caps for your organization, although we have been given assurances that as long as the use case is legitimate, the special business review will be accepted

If you’d like to proceed with a special business review, please reach out to us at support@scaletowin.com. However, we would not recommend this path given the wait time and expense.