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Quiet hours for texts

A text goes out when it is a decent hour where the person is. Not where your store is, and not where you are. If your campaign starts at 9am in New York, somebody in California does not get it at 6am their time. They get it later that morning.

This is for marketing texts only, and for a late reply to somebody subscribed to your texts. Everything else goes at once — see What does not wait, below. Email is not held back for the hour.

Whose hours decide

Two sets of hours, and a text goes out only when both allow it — with the few exceptions under What does not wait, below.

Your hours are applied inside the law's. Widening yours never widens theirs: if you choose 7am, somebody in a state that starts at 8am still gets their text at 8am. Narrowing yours works exactly as you would expect.

For somebody we can place, both are read in the person's own local time. Your store's time zone plays no part. Somebody we cannot place is the one difference, below.

If your hours and a state's hours never meet — say you chose 9pm to 11pm, in a state where texts stop at 8pm — nobody in that state can be texted. Their texts wait. Pick hours that leave some daytime.

How we know where somebody is

In this order, stopping at the first that tells us:

  1. Their location, from what your store already holds about them: the address on their customer record, where their visits to your store come from, or a location that came in with an import. What matters is the state or province they are in.
  2. Their phone number's area code, when their location tells us nothing. A New York area code is read on New York's clock, under New York's hours. A number from Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa is read on that place's own clock.
  3. The hours that are a decent time everywhere in the fifty states and DC, when neither tells us — below.

A location we know always wins: somebody whose address is in California is texted on California's clock, whatever their area code says. An area code is never read against the country we know somebody is in, either.

Some area codes cannot name a clock: toll-free numbers, numbers that are not tied to a place, and the area codes that cross a time-zone line, such as the Florida Panhandle's or most of British Columbia's. Those go to step 3.

The phone number decides which hours apply, and nothing else decides that. A Canadian number gets the Canadian hours, wherever the person is. A US number gets US hours, wherever the person is:

Where the person is only picks the clock those hours are read on. An area code says where a number was first handed out, not where the person is today — people move and travel and keep their number — so it comes after their location, never before it, and a number that moved may be an hour or two off.

If neither their location nor their area code tells us where somebody is, they get the text in the hours that are a decent time everywhere in the United States at once — every state, from Hawaii to the East Coast, under the strictest state's rules: 9am to 8pm, and noon to 8pm on Sundays. That runs from 9am in Hawaii to 8pm Eastern time — 3pm to 8pm Eastern in summer and 2pm to 8pm in winter, and on Sundays from 6pm Eastern in summer and 5pm in winter. The US territories, such as Puerto Rico and Guam, are not part of this: their numbers have their own clocks. Past the area code we do not guess at a time zone, because a wrong guess is a text at six in the morning.

For a Canadian number, we read the hours on the person's own clock when we know where they are — from their location, or else their area code. When neither tells us (the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut share one area code across four time zones), they get the text in the hours that are 8am to 9pm everywhere in Canada at once — from Newfoundland to British Columbia and the Yukon. That is from 11am to 7:30pm Eastern time, every day. They are counted on the same No location line.

Your own Send between hours still apply to these people, read on your store's clock rather than theirs. We do not know their clock, and your hours read in every time zone at once would leave little or no time that suits them all. If your store has no time zone yet, your hours are ignored for these people and the law's shared hours alone decide — the law still applies everywhere.

The shared hours move with daylight saving. If your store's clock changes in spring and fall, your Send between hours can meet them in winter and miss them in summer, or the other way round. A campaign checks this for the day it is scheduled to start, not the day you look at it.

On a text campaign, these people are counted on their own line, No location. Somebody their area code places is not on it. They are part of the number the campaign reaches, and nobody waits for ever for being unplaced.

If your hours never meet that shared window — say your store is on Eastern time and you chose 9am to noon — the people we cannot place are not texted. On a text campaign they are excluded from the number the campaign reaches, and the No location line says why: your own hours. Widen Send between under Settings → Text messages and they are counted again. If we learn where one of them is before the campaign runs out of time, they are texted in their own hours. A campaign has three days from the moment it starts.

Waiting for the hour never costs somebody their text. If the only thing between a person and your campaign is the hour where they are, they get it when their morning comes — even if that is after the campaign's three days. That holds while your store can send texts: if your number is paused or still waiting for approval when the three days are up, the campaign ends then, the same as for anyone else still waiting.

Other things that make a text wait

A marketing text can also wait for the limit of one marketing text a day for each person, or for the caps a few states set per phone number. A text that waits goes as soon as the limit allows, as long as the campaign still has time.

A text that waits is not lost. It goes the moment the hour, the day or the cap allows, as long as the campaign still has time.

What does not wait

Only marketing texts, and a late reply to somebody subscribed to your texts, wait for the hour. Everything else goes straight away, at any hour and outside your own Send between hours too: the program details, your answer to STOP or HELP, the six-digit code, and a reply in Conversations within a day of their own text.

A reply more than a day after their last text waits for the hour. Only somebody subscribed to your texts can get one. It is scheduled and goes out on its own when their quiet hours end, and you can cancel it until then. It also counts toward their state's daily limit and the 10 a day, the way a marketing text does.

A scheduled reply goes within a day of when you wrote it, or not at all. If it is still waiting a day later, or would go only after that, it stays in the conversation marked Not sent, so a reply never arrives days after the conversation it belonged to.