Version b1beecb9 - first version
SMS and A2P Disclosure
This document describes how text messaging works on the platform: what consent we require you to
have, how opt-out is handled, what registration with the carriers involves, and what happens when a
carrier filters a message. It is part of the Terms of Service. It is a draft prepared by the build
and is subject to review and acceptance by the owner and their counsel; the version hash on the page
identifies exactly which text you are reading.
1. Consent
Before a text message is sent to a person from your workspace, you must hold that person's consent
to receive it, of the kind the message requires:
- Conversational or transactional - a reply to something they initiated, an appointment
reminder, a delivery notice. Consent is established by the relationship and the record of it.
- Marketing or promotional - express written consent, captured before the message is sent, with
a clear description of what they were agreeing to receive and from whom.
The platform stores a consent record against the contact: what was agreed, when, through what
channel, and the text of the disclosure shown at the time. That record is what the outbound gate
reads. A contact with no consent record does not receive a marketing message, and the send is
refused rather than queued.
2. What your opt-in language must say
Whatever form, keyword or checkbox you use to collect consent must state, in language the person
actually sees before they agree:
- The name of the business that will be sending.
- What kind of messages will be sent, and roughly how often.
- That message and data rates may apply.
- How to stop, and how to get help.
- Where your privacy policy and terms can be read.
Consent to receive messages may not be a condition of buying something, unless the messages are
what was bought.
3. Opt-out and help
The platform honours the standard stop keywords on every inbound message, in every workspace,
without configuration. When a stop keyword arrives, the contact is marked opted out immediately, a
single confirmation is sent, and subsequent marketing sends to that contact are refused by the gate.
Help keywords return your business name and a contact route.
An opt-out cannot be reversed by you. It is reversed only by the contact opting in again, and the
new consent record is what the gate reads from then on.
4. Registration with the carriers
Application-to-person text traffic in several countries must be registered before carriers will
deliver it reliably. Registration associates a brand and a campaign - a description of what you send
and to whom - with the numbers you send from. The platform supports filing that registration and
tracks its state.
Until a registration is approved, sending is limited. The platform makes the state of your
registration visible rather than letting you discover it from missing replies.
What you file must describe what you actually send. A registration that understates volume, or
describes a use case other than the real one, is a misstatement to the carrier and puts every sender
behind the same registration at risk of filtering.
5. Carrier filtering, and why a send that succeeded is not a message that arrived
This is the disclosure that matters most, because it is the one whose absence causes the worst
outcome.
When you send a message, the carrier's API returns a result that says only that the carrier
accepted the request. It does not say the message was delivered. A carrier may accept a message
and then silently drop it - most commonly when the traffic is unregistered, when the content matches
a filtering rule, or when the sending number's reputation is poor. In that case there is no error
anywhere: the send returned success, your automation advances, the logs look healthy, and the
message never reaches a human.
The platform treats accepted and delivered as different states, and only an inbound delivery
receipt from the carrier moves a message to delivered. Any automation step that depends on a message
having arrived reads the delivery state, never the send response. Where the ratio of accepted to
delivered departs from what it should be, the platform raises that as a condition to be looked at
rather than leaving it to be noticed.
We do not control carrier filtering decisions and cannot promise delivery of any particular message.
6. Quiet hours and frequency
You are responsible for the time-of-day rules that apply where your recipient is, not where you are.
The platform records a contact's time zone where it can determine one and can hold a send until a
permitted window. Frequency is your decision; a recipient's tolerance for it is not.
7. Recording what happened
For every outbound message the platform retains the consent record it was sent under, the send
result, and every delivery receipt received. That record is what lets you answer a complaint with
evidence rather than recollection.
8. Changes
When this disclosure changes, the previous text stays available at its own address and the version
hash on the page changes.