Should I Use a Short Code or a Long code?
Should I Use a Short Code or a Long code?
Here at AvidMobile this is a question our team answers on a daily basis. A Short code is a five or six digit phone number commonly used for SMS communication.
It’s easy if you answer these questions
- Transactional or en mass
- Conversational or marketing
- Low volume or high volume
Short codes allow businesses to send marketing, transactional, alert, notification, and emergency SMS messages to end users who have opted into the short code campaign. Short codes are the best option when looking to send high volumes of SMS messages. In addition campaigns sent via short code should be provisioned and set-up with the carriers ahead of time.
SMS long codes work just like a regular phone number allowing you to seamlessly send and receive SMS messages. Long codes are more often used to deliver a lower volume of SMS messages. Businesses can use long codes for online chat or customer service type functions, transactional alerts, appointment notifications, and more.
When it comes to long codes one must remember that they are not designed for bulk SMS, nor will the carrier provision them for that type of use. We typically recommend to our long code users that they send less than 200 SMS messages per day, per long code. A business that wants to use long codes to send thousands, tens of thousands, or even more SMS messages on a daily basis would want secure a bank of long codes and divide traffic between them. This is something that can be easily done with the AvidMobile API.
