Ringover's SMS sending solution allows you to easily send and receive SMS with a mobile line. Whether you need to send notifications, reminders, or even launch SMS marketing campaigns, Ringover offers an effective and user-friendly solution.

In just a few clicks, communicate quickly with your customers and prospects, wherever they are. In this guide, you’ll learn how to optimize your SMS character usage, understand pricing, and troubleshoot sending limitations.

Managing your SMS character

1. Understand SMS Pricing

The cost of sending SMS varies based on the characters used and the character count. This rate applies to a 160-character message sent from a French Ringover mobile number to a French GSM mobile.

⚠️ If your SMS exceeds 160 characters or uses special characters (é, ç, or emojis 😊), the cost will be adjusted. To optimize your sends, be sure to check the length and type of characters before validating your messages.

Check our rates for details.

2. Write SMS effectively

A standard SMS has a maximum length of 160 characters, using standard GSM 7-bit characters. This alphabet includes Latin letters, numbers, and some common symbols. Each character, including spaces, counts as 1 character:

💡If you need to send a long or detailed message, consider splitting it into multiple SMS messages to stay within the maximum segment limit and optimize your usage.

Some accented characters ("ê", "ë", "î", etc.) belong to the Unicode alphabet, which reduces the message length to 70 characters. Keep this in mind to avoid having your messages charged in multiple parts. The line break corresponding to the addition of the 2 control characters CR + LF also counts as 2.

3. Using unicode for Non-Latin languages

If you send SMS in languages such as Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic, or Thai, you will need to use the Unicode alphabet. This alphabet supports all non-Latin characters but limits the message length to 70 characters.

Here are the pricing tiers for Unicode SMS:

1 Unicode SMS = 70 characters
2 Unicode SMS = 134 characters
3 Unicode SMS = 201 characters

4. Long SMS and message breakdown

💡 Tip: If your message exceeds 160 characters or 70 characters in Unicode (multiple SMS of a maximum of 153 or 67 characters each are sent and charged), it will be automatically split into multiple SMS. For example:

An SMS of 180 characters in 7-bit will be split (and charged) into 2 messages: one of 153 characters and the other of 27.
An SMS of 180 characters with a Unicode character will be split (and charged) into 3 messages of 67, 67, and 46 characters.

Good to know:

SMS messages sent from Ringover are limited to a maximum of 8 segments.

UTF-8 Encoding: Now limited to 512 bytes (approx. 8 fragments). This was previously 1024 bytes.
GSM7 Encoding: Remains unchanged at 1024 bytes (approx. 7 fragments).

If this limit is exceeded, the text will be automatically shortened while composing. It will no longer be possible to paste or write a longer SMS.

If needed, we recommend splitting long content into multiple SMS messages.

5. SMS sending limitations and troubleshooting

Ringover mobile numbers only support national SMS (within the same country as the number). To send SMS to a different country, you need to purchase mobile numbers specific to that country. For example, to send SMS to US numbers, you would need US mobile numbers.

Why might my SMS fail to send?

If you're sending a high volume of messages without receiving responses, you may reach the hourly sending limit. This triggers a temporary block to prevent potential spam or misuse of the messaging system.

If you notice accents and special characters being replaced by question marks in your SMS, this is likely due to character encoding issues. Contact Ringover support for assistance with this technical problem.

6. Understanding SMS Credits

How SMS credits work

Credits are used exclusively for sending SMS messages and are deducted from your account with each send. Receiving SMS does not consume any credits.

Billing flexibility

Ringover bills you only for the actual SMS credits you use. For example, if you add 50€ of SMS credits but only use 25€, you will only be charged for the 25€ consumed.

No expiration

Your SMS credits do not have a specific validity period or require monthly renewal. They remain available until fully consumed, providing flexibility in managing your communication expenses.

🎉 You now know how to carefully manage the length of your SMS and can easily optimize your usage and avoid unnecessary charges!