Help · Settings

Leaving your old texting service

If you already send text messages from another service, the people who agreed to them can come with you. They keep their agreement. What changes is the number your texts come from: your store texts from a number of its own here, so your people have to be told about the new one before you text them from it.

That takes two texts and a few steps, and the order of the steps matters.

The steps, in order

Import your people first, then start verification, and keep your old number until your new one is approved. Then send a goodbye text from the old number, and the new-number text from here a day or more later.

1. Keep your old service and your number until you have finished here. Do not remove the number or cancel texting there yet. A number you remove is gone for good, and you need it for the goodbye text in step 4.
2. Import your people. Connecting your old email service imports their text agreements along with everything else. If a list agreed to texts with an even earlier provider, certify it: open Settings → Text messages, and on the Settings tab, at the bottom, find Lists that agreed to texts with another service.
3. Then start verification on Settings, then Text messages. Importing first means your number approval says that the people you imported are moving with you, and an approval cannot be changed afterward — without that, the text that tells them about your new number cannot be sent. If your approval would not cover them as it stands — usually because your store's name and the name your texts use are too long for the example texts to fit that text — a warning above Start verification says so and names what to shorten or put back. Fix it before you press the button.
4. When your number is approved, send a goodbye text from your old service. It tells your people the number is changing, from the number they already know. Something like this, with your store's name and your new number: "Your Store: We're changing our number! From now on, our texts come from [your new number]. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help."
5. A day or more later, send the new-number text from here. Open Settings, then Text messages, and find the Your new number card at the bottom of the Settings tab. The button on it says how many people it is for — Send to 1,950 people, say. Press it and confirm with Send. Before your number is approved the card has no button: it says to start verification first, or that your number is waiting for approval.
6. After that, disable texting at your old service. Your people have heard from both numbers, and the new one is the one they will see from now on.

What the new-number text says

Every person gets the same text from your new number, with your store's name in it. It tells them who is writing, what they will get, how often, and how to stop, and you cannot change it.

It reads like this: "Your Store: this is our new number for offers and news by text. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply HELP for help. Reply STOP to opt out."

It is written for you because it is the text the carriers expect first from a new number.

It goes out a few at a time, and only during your text hours in each person's own time. Somebody for whom it is night gets it in the morning. With many people it can take a while. The card counts them as they go, and says the day you sent it.

Each one is usually two message parts — three if your store's name uses a character outside the plain text alphabet — and it is billed like any other text. The card says the exact number. During your free trial, or before your store has a plan, the card says texts wait for your subscription and has no button; send it once your subscription starts.

If something stops your texts, the card says so beside its count: text messages are disabled, texting is paused for your store, your Shopify connection needs reconnecting, your store reached the monthly limit you set for text messages, your texts reached today's spending limit (they go out after midnight UTC), or your subscription has not started. Nothing goes out while it says so. If a send is held for a long time, people it did not reach show on the card again with the button, so you can send to them once the hold is over.

About 2 in 100 people reply STOP to a text like this. That is normal when a store changes numbers, and it is a typical figure, not a promise — your own list may see more or fewer. Those people are unsubscribed from your texts, like anyone who replies STOP.

You cannot undo a send. If you import more people later, or certify another list, the card shows a new count, and pressing the button again sends the text to the people who have not had it.

Anyone who can send campaigns can press the button: the owner, a manager or a marketer. Everyone else sees the card without it.

Who gets the new-number text

Only people whose text agreement arrived confirmed, for the number on their profile now. That is people your old service watched agree — who texted it a keyword, or used one of its own sign-up forms — and the people on a list you certified.

Some people are excluded:

• People still waiting. Their agreement arrived without a record of how it was given. They confirm by themselves the next time they sign up on one of your forms, and that sign-up gives them everything this text would.
• People whose number has changed since they agreed. The agreement stays with the number it was given for.
• People who unsubscribed from your texts, and numbers marked Do not text.
• Profiles marked Not confirmed yet. Like every text you send, this one goes only to profiles that read Verified identity.

Nobody gets it twice.

Until they get it

You cannot send a campaign text to the people you imported before they have had the new-number text. The first text anybody gets from your store's number has to explain what they signed up for, and this is the text that does it. Until then, your text campaigns exclude them and do not count them.

If the card says the text cannot be sent

Your number approval does not cover the people you imported, and an approval cannot be changed once it is given. Each of them can still confirm by signing up on one of your forms.

The card says "Your number approval does not cover the people you imported, so this text cannot be sent. Each of them can still confirm by signing up on one of your forms."

Your number approval is what lets this text go, and an approval cannot be changed once it is given. The same happens if the name your texts use is too long when you file, because the example texts in your approval then have no room for this one — the warning above Start verification is there to catch that before you file. Either way, the people you imported still confirm one at a time: the next time each of them signs up on one of your forms, they are texted a code to type back, and that does everything this text would.

If the card says your texts' name changed

Change How your texts name you back to the name your number was approved with, and the card offers the button again. The new-number text must match your approval word for word.

The card says "Your texts' name changed after your number was approved, so this text no longer matches your approval and cannot be sent."

Your approval holds the new-number text word for word, with the name your texts used at the time.

Can I keep my old number?

Not here. Your store texts from the number it gets when you start verification, and the app does not take over a number from another service. Moving a number between services takes weeks, and the change of number usually costs about 2 in 100 people, once. A short code — the five- or six-digit kind — cannot be used here either.