Mobile Commons: Multi-Part SMS

Mobile Commons offers the ability to send multi-part SMS messages which appear on most handsets as a long-form message. Multi-part SMS messages allow up to 1600 characters, instead of the standard 160. In order to create a multi-part SMS message simply include text that is longer than 160 characters (or, if using special characters over 70). The character counter will recognize your message as a multi-part SMS and update the character counter. 

You can send special characters within your multi-part SMS messages. Different aggregators support special characters slightly differently. We recommend testing delivery on your handset before broadcasting to your subscribers. 

Multi-part SMS messages appear on most handsets as a single block of text but are actually sent as multiple text messages. Some feature phones may not re-order the multiple parts of the message into one single block. We can not guarantee that the parts of the message will come over in the correct order. It is important to test this out on multiple handsets; each carrier and handset has slightly different rules about how they break up the messages.

When using normal SMS, each part is 153 characters long. For Canadian normal SMS each part is 134 characters long. For any message that includes special characters or emoji each part is 67 characters.

Please note that not all carriers and devices can support receipt of multi-part messages. The delivery of multi-part messaging is very device-specific, some older devices simply do not support the sending and receipt of multi-part messages. Sprint does not officially support multi-part messages, however, some devices on the Sprint network are able to receive multi-part messages. These messages will come as separate messages with the part in parentheses. Example "(1/3) Test message." Note that the parentheses do count in the character count, so when you're writing out your message, you are losing 5-6 characters per part on Sprint.

US Cellular does NOT support multi-part messages, multi-part messages will fail if sent to US Cellular subscribers. Republic Wireless phones will sometimes receive sections of the multi-part message out of order.

Please note that you will be billed based on the multiple messages, not a single message. If your message has 4 parts, each is considered 1 MT. If you were sending a 4 part message to 10 people you would be billed for 40 messages, not 10.

We do not recommend using multi-part SMS for opt-in messages. 

You can view and track the messages you've sent as standard SMS vs. Multi-Part SMS in the Dashboard, Opt-In Path Reporting, Campaign Reporting and Message Reporting. You'll see "Sent as Multi-Part SMS"  along with how many parts were sent. So if you sent 1 long message that went out as 3 parts, you'd see Sent 1 Multi-Part SMS (3 Parts).