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Text messages

Text messages work differently from email in one way that decides everything else about this screen: you cannot send a text from an anonymous address. You send from a phone number, that number has to belong to you, and a carrier has to approve it before a single message goes anywhere. That approval is a review by a person: usually a few days, sometimes a few weeks. If texting is in your plans, apply for your number as soon as you can.

Texts are on the $29 plan. On the Free plan, or before your store has a plan, you can enable text messages and register your number, and nothing is texted until you choose the $29 plan — the top of this screen says so, with a Choose the $29 plan button. A few texts go out all the same, because they are part of how texting works rather than your marketing: the first text a shopper gets when they sign up, which tells them what they agreed to; the code a shopper is sent to confirm their number when a form asks for it; the answer when somebody texts STOP, HELP or START; and the code that confirms a team member's own mobile number for testing text messages. The Plans and billing help page has the details.

So the channel comes on in two steps, and they are deliberately far apart.

Step one — enable it

Open Settings, then Text messages, and enable the switch. The screen then has two tabs: Your number, for getting your number approved, and Settings, for how your texts go out.

Once it is on, the screen has two tabs. Your number is everything about getting your number and where it stands — the registration, the carrier's answer, and the number itself once you have it. Settings is how your texts go out, and the switch itself, which stays there so you can always disable text messages.

If your store sends email from its own domain, enabling text messages adds one record to that domain's setup, so links in your texts carry your own name. A note at the top of the screen says so and links the Domain page, until the record is in place.

Nothing is sent and nothing is bought. What changes is that your number approval form may now ask for a phone number, and the people who give you one are recorded, with what they agreed to and when.

That is a real place to stop. You can collect for weeks before you ask for a number — and it is usually the right order, because the registration you file later has to show a carrier a live form that asks for a number, and your number approval form, published this morning, is the evidence for it.

Until the switch is on, a form that asks for a phone number cannot be published. That is not a limitation of forms; it is this switch. Enable it and publish.

Your number approval form

When a carrier reviews your number, it looks at one form on your store: a form that asks for a phone number, with the consent sentence for text messages. That form is your number approval form, and your store has one.

Before your number is approved, it is the only form with a phone number you can publish. Every other form that asks for a phone number says This cannot be published until after your phone number is approved. beside its Publish button, and publishes like any other form once the carrier approves your number. You can build those forms in the meantime; they wait as drafts.

Create it from this screen. While no published form on your store asks for a phone number, the Your number tab says what is missing: it offers to create your number approval form if you have none, and if you have one it says what is in the way — publish it, resume it if it is paused, or put its Mobile number block back if it no longer asks for one. This screen is the only place it is made; the New form screen does not list it. It asks for a first name and a mobile number, with a consent sentence that names your store. It does not promise a code, because nothing is texted to anybody before your number is approved. Change the words as you like and publish it.

The form's own page and its editor walk you through the rest. On your number approval form, and on no other form, a banner under the form's name says the one thing to do next, in order:

  1. Publish it. Until it is published the carrier has nothing to look at.
  2. Create your Text sign-up page. Once it is published, the banner offers the button right there, so you do not have to come back here for it.
  3. Check the form shows on the page, if your store has never shown a Carpe Messaging form yet. Open your Text sign-up page and look; if the form is not there, enable Carpe Messaging forms in the theme editor. Opening the page is usually all it takes, and this step goes away by itself once it shows.
  4. Start verification. Once the page is up, the banner gives you its address and a button back to Settings → Text messages, where the registration is filled in and sent.

If something is in the way instead, it says that: the form is paused (resume it from the form's own page), it no longer asks for a phone number (put the block back and publish), or the page is hidden or was changed in Shopify. While the carrier is reviewing your number it reminds you to keep the form and the page as they are. Once your number is approved the editor says nothing more, and the form's own page simply says where the form lives. The form's page never asks you to place this form in your theme: its place is your Text sign-up page, and that is what its Where it shows says.

Your Text sign-up page

The carrier needs one address to open and find your number approval form on it, so Carpe Messaging makes that page for you. Under Settings → Text messages, once your store has a number approval form, press Create your Text sign-up page. It makes a page in your online store called Text sign-up with the form inside it, in the page itself rather than floating over it. The form sits in that page and shows nowhere else. You never edit your theme for it. The form shows there once it is published, while forms are enabled in your current theme. There is nothing to publish again after making the page.

This card says at a glance whether the page is fine. A green Looks right beside its address means the page is on your store and shows your published number approval form, which is the one state the carrier can use; the line under it says what to do next. Not yet means the page is there but is not showing the form: the form is a draft or paused, it lost its phone number, or the page is hidden or was changed in Shopify. The sentence beside it says which.

When we file your registration, that page is the address we give the carrier for where people sign up, unless you typed a different one yourself. We look the page up in your store each time, so the address is the one it has when you file. Until the page is there, verification waits. Your number approval form shows on that page and nowhere else, so without it the carrier would open your store and find no form: Start verification and Send it again stay off and say Create your Text sign-up page first, and the same goes while the page is hidden or we cannot reach your store to check it.

The page is yours. You can change its title or its address in Shopify, and write your own words above and below the form, and we still find it. We look at the page every time you open this screen. If it was deleted, the card offers Create your Text sign-up page again; if it is hidden or shows an older form, press Check the page and it is put back, and the card says so. It never makes a second one, and it never touches your words. If the form itself was edited out of the page, the screen says so: delete that page in Shopify and create it again here.

The first time, your store may need to approve a new permission: letting Carpe Messaging make pages in your online store. Until it does, the button says so. The next time you open the app from your Shopify admin, Shopify asks for it; approve it and press the button again. Nothing else changes while you wait.

Once your number is approved, it is a form like any other. People who give their number on it get the six-digit code to confirm, the same as on every other form, with nothing for you to change.

If the carrier turns your number down, your number approval form can still be published, because fixing it is how you answer the carrier: change what they asked about, publish it, and send your registration again. Every other form that asks for a phone number waits until your number is approved. If texting is paused, no form that asks for a phone number can be published, the number approval form included, until it is resumed. Resume and going back to an earlier version follow the same rule as Publish. Forms that are already live stay live and go on collecting numbers, and nothing is texted to anybody; pause one from its own ⋮ menu if you want it off your store.

And it works the other way too: while a published form is still asking for a phone number, the switch cannot be disabled. It would have no effect on that form — a form that is already live goes on asking whatever this screen says — so the switch names the form, links it, and asks you to pause it first. Pause is in the form's own ⋮ menu, and Resume puts it back once your store can collect numbers on it again — with the switch on, and your number approved (or, for your number approval form, under review or turned down) — and says why if it cannot yet.

If text messages are off when somebody sends you a form, the number is not recorded. The rest of what they typed is kept as usual. Nothing is lost that was ever collected; what was never collected is simply not there, and enabling the switch later does not go back and find it.

A number typed into a form never moves a number you already have. Filling one in is somebody saying "text me here", and the six-digit code is what proves they are holding that handset. So a blank is filled at the moment we text that code — never before, and never at all if no code went out — and the number only becomes textable once the code comes back. A number that is already on file changes in your store, on the customer's own record, where they sign in as themselves.

And somebody who texted STOP stays stopped. Typing their number into a form does not put them back: a form can be filled in by anybody, and STOP was that person's own word from that handset. The way back is the same way — START, texted from the handset itself.

Your forms show them how. Somebody whose number texted STOP and who types it into one of your forms is not thanked as if they had joined. The form says This number asked us to stop texting it. Text START to rejoin., with a button that opens their messages with your number and START already typed (on desktop, a code to scan with their phone), and waits. When their START arrives, the form texts them the six-digit code, and typing it back finishes the sign-up and hands over the discount, if the form gives one. A START from any other phone does not move the form on. What a form collects has the whole of it.

A code a carrier refused because of a STOP is caught too. If somebody's STOP reached the carrier but was never passed on to us, the carrier refuses the code text. The form notices and shows the same START panel instead of waiting for a code that will never arrive. The carrier has the last word about that phone, so their profile shows text messages as Unsubscribed until they text START and the form sees it: while the page is open and waiting for their text (on mobile, once they press Text START or Check again), otherwise the next time they fill in the form with that number. That next form goes straight to the code; they are not asked to text START again.

Email works the other way round, and on purpose. There, sending the form with an address in it — typed, or filled in from the shopper's store account — is that person's consent, even if they had unsubscribed before — see Consent. The difference is the code: on this channel there is a stronger proof available, and the six digits are it. Email has no equivalent that does not cost somebody a message they never asked for.

Step two — ask for a number

The Your number tab becomes Get your text-message number: the registration the carrier reviews, already filled in from your store and set out as numbered steps. You check it, change what needs changing and send it, and your number is bought in the same act.

When you are ready, the Your number tab becomes Get your text-message number. It shows only what that takes: a card with the four steps from here to sending (number bought, registration sent, carrier review, ready to send), the list of what the carrier will look at, and the registration itself, already filled in and set out as numbered steps — Your business, How people sign up, What you sell, and Start. How your texts go out (the hours, forwarding) is on the Settings tab.

Before you start — what the carriers will not carry

The carriers decide what crosses their networks, and they refuse whole categories of business outright. Check this list before you go any further, because it is the one thing on this page nobody can fix for you:

If your store sells or promotes any of these, a number cannot be approved for it, however well the registration is written. That is the carriers' rule and there is no appeal to it, so we ask you here rather than letting you buy a number and find out in a fortnight.

Everything on that list is refused here, whether the carriers forbid it outright, our messaging provider does not carry it, or the carriers allow it only with an authorization we do not hold. That includes alcohol: you can still email about it, but you cannot text about it.

You will be asked to confirm that your store sells none of the refused categories before Start verification will do anything. Until you do, no number is bought and nothing is filed. It is your statement about your own business: make it only if it is true, and tell us if that changes while your number is registered.

What the carrier will look at

A registration is read by a person, and there is a short list of things they check. The screen marks each one:

The two that are always yours are the business name and, on a store whose pages we have not read yet, your about page. The business name has to match your registration document exactly — not your trading name, not the name on your shopfront — and we have never seen that document, so nobody but you can check it.

Your privacy policy and terms

The reviewer opens your shop and reads two pages. We can't tell you what your policies should say — only what the carrier checks for in them:

The row has a link to each page in your Shopify admin. Shopify keeps them in two places: your terms under Settings → Policies, and your privacy policy under Settings → Customer privacy. If Shopify writes your privacy policy for you automatically, you disable that there before you can add your own sentence.

When your store has a password

If your store asks visitors for a password, the reviewer cannot open it, and the row says Not yet. Disable Private mode under Store access in Online Store → Preferences — the row links straight there. Shopify lets you disable the password only once your store is on a paid plan. Until the password is removed, Start verification stays unavailable: the carriers would refuse the registration, so no number is bought and nothing is sent.

The registration itself

Every descriptive field is written for you, out of what your store already knows: your name, your website, the wording on your own sign-up form, and an image of that form as your customers see it. If your form asks for the phone number on a later step, the image is of that step, so it shows the number box and its consent wording. The paragraph about how people sign up quotes your form's consent wording in full, word for word; only wording longer than the carrier's box allows is shortened, and then the sentences that go are the last ones that carry none of the terms a carrier checks for — your name, that consent is not a condition of purchase, how often you text, the rates notice, HELP and STOP. Read every line before you send it. You are the one making these statements, in your own business's name, and the carrier checks them against public records.

A few boxes are yours to fill in:

In What you sell, enable My store does not sell or promote any of these. It must be on to register: if it is off, the carrier will not issue a number.

How your texts name you is in step 2, because the first text somebody gets is written from it. It starts as your store's name.

Where your sign-up form is is the page a reviewer opens to find your form, and both the paragraph about what you will send and the one about how people sign up name it. If your form only shows on one page, name that page here — a reviewer who opens your homepage and finds no form sends the registration back. When your form is set to show on exactly one page, that page is already filled in for you; otherwise it starts as your web address. It has to be a page on your own store.

With your number approval form, it is your Text sign-up page, and you do not type it. The registration always names that page where it is now — rename the page in Shopify and the registration follows it, including on a send-back. Until the page exists, the box says to create it first.

Your number is registered for marketing texts. You do not choose this: we register every store's number for marketing. That is why What you will send describes offers, new products and things back in stock, and why the example messages are all of that kind. A registration that also mentions order updates is sent back by the carrier, so none of these boxes can mention them.

The box at your checkout is named as a second way people sign up. How people sign up ends with a sentence saying customers may also tick "text me" at your checkout or in their account, and the example messages include the one text that tick gets — your program details, with your store's name. Everybody who ticks the box gets that text, whatever your registration says, so leave the sentence in: it is how the carrier hears about that way of signing up.

People you imported are named in what you will send. If you imported text agreements before you started, What you will send includes a sentence saying that people who agreed to texts with your old text provider get one first text from your new number, and the example messages include that text, so your registration tells the carrier about them. It is in What you will send rather than in How people sign up, because the wording on your form fills that box and comes first. If your store's name and the name your texts use are long, the example messages have no room for the new-number text, and your registration cannot name the people you imported. A warning above Start verification says so before you file, and names what to shorten or put back.

The consent wording on your form has to say marketing too. The carrier reads it word for word. If your form still says something like "marketing and order update text messages", Wording on that form saying what they are agreeing to shows Not yet, and the registration cannot be sent. Open the form, change that sentence to speak of marketing text messages only, publish it, and come back. We never change the words on a form you have published.

Press Save to keep what you have typed. The bar that appears when you change something saves your registration as well as your settings, so you can leave and come back to it; Discard goes back to what you last saved. Saving does not send anything to the carrier — that happens only when you press Start verification. My store does not sell or promote any of these is saved too, and it has to be on when you send the registration.

Four of the boxes stop at 500 characters. That is the carrier's limit, not ours, and the counter under each one tells you where you are. The box stops taking letters rather than letting you find out at the end.

When everything is filled in, press Start verification. Two things happen: a phone number is bought for your store, and the registration goes in.

The number and its registration are included in your plan. Approval usually takes a few days to a few weeks.

Once it is filed, the form folds away. There is nothing left to change while a carrier is reading it, so the whole section collapses to a single row. The top of the screen shows your number, a status (such as Waiting for the carrier) and how far along the four steps it is. Press the triangle on that row to read back exactly what was sent. If the carrier sends the registration back, or refuses it, the form opens again by itself — because then there is something for you to do.

Easy Opt-in — the code they type back

Once your number is approved, this is how a phone number reaches you, and there is nothing to set up.

Somebody types their number into one of your forms and presses the button. We text them a six-digit code. The form shows a box and they put the code in on the same page: on an iPhone it is usually offered above the keyboard; on a Mac that gets the iPhone's texts, it is an AutoFill suggestion under the box; anywhere else it is typed. The form confirms it as soon as all six digits are in, and only then do they get the thank-you and the discount code if your form hands one out. They never leave your page, and nobody is asked to reply to a text.

The code text is also your program details. It names your store, says how often you text, that message and data rates may apply, and that they can reply HELP for help or STOP to opt out. That is why somebody who signs up on a form is never sent a second text with the same details.

The heading, the line under it and the button on that screen are yours to write, on the Mobile number block's Confirmation code card, which appears once your number is approved. There is more about it under Forms.

You cannot enable or disable this. It is not a setting. Every form that asks for a phone number texts the code, because it is what lets you text the people who give you one: until the code comes back, the profile reads Awaiting confirmation and your marketing texts exclude it.

Why the reward waits

The code comes before the thank-you, which means somebody who abandons the form on the code screen keeps the sign-up and does not get the discount code. That is deliberate, and it is the cost of knowing that every number in your profiles belongs to the person who typed it. A number that was never confirmed is the one thing you cannot text, so a code handed out before the confirmation would be a discount given away for a number you can never use.

Numbers people gave you on your own forms before your number was approved

Before your number is approved, the only form that can ask for a phone number is your number approval form. The numbers it collects are stored, and they are on your profiles. Nothing is texted to them, and they read Awaiting confirmation — a number given on one of your forms is confirmed by the code, and the code cannot be sent from a number no carrier has approved.

Nothing is lost and nothing has to be redone. The confirmation happens the next time that person fills in one of your forms, once your own number is approved.

Numbers you imported from another service are a different case, and the section below says which of those arrive confirmed.

"Awaiting confirmation" on a profile

Open a profile and the text-message row says one of six things beside Subscribed:

There is no deadline on any of them and we never take the agreement away because somebody did not finish a form — that would be putting words in their mouth. A row that says Awaiting confirmation stays that way until the person confirms, and stays out of every marketing text you send.

Agreements you imported from another service

When you import your people from another email or text service, the agreements that service recorded come with them — and how it recorded each one decides what happens here.

People it watched agree arrive confirmed: people who texted a keyword to sign up, and people who used one of that service's own sign-up forms. You can text them here once your own number is approved and they have had your new-number text, which tells them your texts now come from a different number — see Your new number below.

Everyone else arrives waiting. That covers people it got from a spreadsheet upload, people a staff member subscribed by hand, and people written in by another tool through its API — in each case that service's own record says it did not watch anyone agree. It is not a mistake and there is nothing to redo. Those rows confirm by themselves the next time each person fills in one of your forms.

If a whole list agreed with a text provider you used before, you can say so. On the Settings tab, at the bottom, under Lists that agreed to texts with another service, each list you imported where at least half the people agreed to texts has a switch beside it and a line saying how many of the people on it are in that position. Enable it to certify that the people on this list agreed to texts with a previous provider, and we record your name and the date against the list, because that is the evidence the phone carriers expect a store to have. It applies as soon as you enable it — there is nothing to import again. It reaches everyone on the list your store holds as agreeing to texts, however that service recorded them, including people whose agreement is recorded in Shopify — but only for the number on each person's profile now. Nobody who has unsubscribed, reported your email as spam, or agreed for a different number is included. And a certification cannot be withdrawn: the people it confirmed stay confirmed. To stop texting one person, unsubscribe that person on their profile. Only an owner or a manager can certify a list — see the help page on moving over from another service, which walks through it.

A list where fewer than half the people agreed to texts — a newsletter list, say — is excluded from the card, because being on it says nothing about texts. So is a list with nobody in that position, and a list you have deleted. A list you have already certified always stays, even if fewer people on it agree to texts later. If the card is not there at all, nothing you imported needs it.

Everyone else who came in agreeing to texts. Below the lists is one more switch, with a count. Some of the people your store holds as agreeing to texts are on no list you could certify — often Shopify customers whose agreement another app recorded in Shopify with no date on it. (One Shopify dated counts on its own and needs nothing from you.) Enable it to certify that everyone your store holds as agreeing to texts, imported or recorded in Shopify by another app, agreed with a previous provider. It works exactly like a list: only an owner or a manager can enable it, we record your name and the date, it applies at once, and it cannot be withdrawn. It also covers people who come in later the same way — a customer whose agreement another app records in Shopify next month is included as they arrive, with nothing more for you to do. It never includes anybody who unsubscribed, reported your email as spam, or agreed for a different number, and never somebody who only gave a number on one of your own forms without typing the code back. Only people with a Verified identity are counted or included, on a list or here; someone verified later is included then.

Your new number

Your store texts from a number of its own here. So before you can text the people who agreed to texts before your number was set up — people you imported from a previous service, and your Shopify customers who agreed in your store — each of them gets one text from your new number saying so: what they will get, how often, and how to stop. It is written for you and cannot be changed.

The Your new number card, on the Settings tab, says how many people it is for, shows the text, and has the button that sends it: Send to and the number of people. It goes out a few at a time. Each one is usually two message parts, and the card says the exact number. About 2 in 100 people usually reply STOP to it. Only a team member who can send campaigns can press it. Before your number is approved the card has no button, and while something stops your texts — text messages disabled, texting paused, your Shopify connection needing reconnecting, the monthly limit reached, or your store not on the $29 plan — it says which instead.

It goes only for the number on each person's profile now, to:

A customer who ticks the box at your checkout or on their account page after you first enabled text messages gets their own first text automatically — free, and not counted on this card. So does a customer whose text sign-up another app recorded in Shopify with Shopify's date on it. Each phone gets one first text, never both. People still waiting confirm on your forms instead, and a form sign-up tells them everything this text would. Nobody who has ever reported your email as spam gets it.

If you have set up your contact card, further up this tab, the new-number text carries it, and adds one sentence: "Tap the card to save us to your contacts." Then each one is billed as one multimedia message (MMS), whatever its length, and the card says so. The card goes only once your number has delivered a multimedia message (MMS) — a campaign text with an image, or with your contact card. Until then the text goes without it, and the card on this tab shows and prices it that way. A contact card you set up or change after you press Send does not go with that send. If a text with the card does not arrive, that person gets the text again without it, once. If their phone company takes it but never confirms it arrived, it counts as reached and is not sent again.

While the texts are going out, the card counts them as they go, and once you have sent it the card says the day you did.

If you imported people from a previous service, the card also says to send the goodbye text from that service first, and this one a day or more later. If the card is not there at all, there is nobody to send it to. The help page Leaving your old texting service walks through the whole move, in order — including why to import before you start verification.

While it is being verified

Everything except send. Keep collecting numbers, writing texts and building audiences while the carrier reviews your number. The answer lands on this screen by itself, so there is nothing to check and nothing to chase.

Keep collecting numbers on your forms. Write the texts you want to send. Build the audiences you want to send them to. The moment the carrier approves the number, all of it is ready and nothing has to be redone.

The answer lands on this screen by itself. There is nothing to check and nothing to chase. The status card says the day you sent it, so you can see how long it has been.

Once the number is approved, Your number is a short summary: the number, the day it was approved, and Your registration, folded, which opens to show what you sent.

If it says "It is your turn"

The carrier has sent your registration back and is waiting for you. Change what their words name and press Send it again — wording they ask about is changed on your sign-up form. A registration left in this state is eventually refused outright, so answer it.

This is the one to read carefully.

A carrier can send a registration back rather than approving or refusing it. It means somebody read it, wants something changed, and is now waiting for you. The screen shows their words exactly as they wrote them — usually a short list of the fields they want different — and the date they asked.

A registration left in this state is eventually refused outright. Not because anything went wrong, but because nobody answered. Change what they named and press Send it again.

Two things about sending it again: something has to actually be different, or the carrier reaches the same conclusion and you wait another fortnight for it; and your number is not affected either way — it stays yours through any number of attempts.

Rewriting the wording on your own sign-up form counts as a change. The registration is built from your store again every time you send it — your name, your website, your form's own consent wording and a fresh image of it — so when the carrier asks for different wording, the place to change it is the form. Rewrite it there, publish, come back to this screen, and the new words are already in the registration waiting for Send it again.

What you typed yourself is kept. Everything you filled in about your business comes back the next time, exactly as you last sent it, so a send-back never hands you an empty form to fill in twice: your legal and trading names, your web address, your address, your tax registration number, your contact details, the kind of business you are and how much you expect to send, your privacy policy and terms addresses, Where your sign-up form is (unless it is your Text sign-up page, which is always where the page is now), the words that sign somebody up, anything you wrote in Anything else, and My store does not sell or promote any of these. You change only what the carrier asked about.

Three boxes are written for you unless you rewrote them. The two paragraphs describing what you send and how people ask for it, and the example messages, are written again from your store every time — along with the image of your form — which is why rewriting your form's consent wording is enough on its own. If you rewrote one of them yourself and sent it, your own words come back instead, exactly as you sent them.

The first text somebody gets is written for you. It carries your store's name and the way out, and it is the same sentence the carrier is shown and the same one that is actually sent — so it is shown on this screen but cannot be typed over. Change your store's name for texts and that sentence changes with it.

If it is refused

The reason is shown in the carrier's own words. Change what it names and send it again. A refusal is not the end of it, and the number you have already bought stays yours.

The two refusals we have seen most are a registration whose summary tells two stories — one number used for two different kinds of message — and one whose sign-up evidence does not match what the summary describes. Both are fixed in the boxes on this screen.

The moment somebody becomes a person you can text, their profile records an event called Consented to Text Messages. It is recorded when their consent is new — the first time since they last said no, or ever — whichever way they gave it:

It is not recorded:

When you first connect your store, people who agreed in Shopify earlier are recorded as we read them. That is history, and it starts nothing — so the Welcome text never goes to the people already on your text list.

The Welcome text starting point, described on the Starting points help page, starts from this event, and you can pick it yourself under What starts this automation? like any other event. It also appears on Analytics → Metrics.

Text message campaigns

Once your number is approved and text messages are enabled, a campaign can be sent as a text: choose Text message under Send it as when you create it. The Campaigns help page covers the rest — the live count, what an emoji does to it, and the people a text cannot reach.

Texting people in Canada

Canadian numbers are texted too, with nothing for you to enable. Canadian law asks a little more of a text than US law does, so three things are different for a Canadian phone number. A number is Canadian when its area code is; where the person is plays no part in that:

Texts to Canada need your store's mailing address, because the contact page and the line on your forms carry it — a full postal address, not just a country. Until your store has one, Canadian numbers are not texted, and your sign-up forms do not take a Canadian phone number either — so add the address before you collect Canadian numbers. The Settings tab of Settings → Text messages says so, and your address is on Settings → Store.

Canadian numbers stop your texts the same way every number does, by replying STOP. A reply of ARRET, the French word Canadian carriers use, stops them too.

A US number is always a US text, wherever the person is. Somebody with a US number who lives in Canada gets no contact line, and gets the strictest hours any state sets — read on their own clock when we know their province; with no province, at a time inside those hours in every Canadian time zone at once, with your Send between hours read on your store's clock. The Quiet hours for texts page has the details.

Numbers outside the US and Canada are not texted.

Once your text link address is set up on Settings → Domain, a link starting with https:// in a marketing text is sent as a short link on your own address, and taps on it are counted. Until then, links are sent exactly as you typed them and taps are not counted. Your links never go out on our address.

Once your text link address is in place — the sms name on your sending domain, set up on Settings → Domain — a link that starts with https:// (or http://) in a marketing text is sent as a short link on it, for example https://sms.yourstore.com/s/Ab3dE9xQ2m. When somebody taps it, we count the tap and send them straight on to the link you typed, exactly as you typed it, including anything after a ?.

Until that address is in place, links are sent exactly as you typed them, and taps on them are not counted. Your links never go out on our address.

A link you add with + Link is shortened the same way. In a campaign's text or an automation's text, + Link picks a product, collection, page, blog post, your home page or your cart, and can apply the discount code (see Campaigns → Step 2: The text). The text sends your store's own address for it — with the code applied and the cart chosen, https://yourstore.com/discount/ then the person's code, then the way to the cart — and that address goes out as a short link on your text link address like any other, with each person's own code in it.

A link with your discount code in it is shortened too. In https://yourstore.com/discount/{{discount_code}}, each person's code is filled in first, and taps on it are counted. A link with any other field in it — a name, or a detail from what started an automation — and an address that arrives inside a field, are sent as filled in and not counted.

Except a link from your store's own services. When an automation starts on an event that came from Shopify, your store's API key or Shopify Flow — such as Checkout Started or Fulfilled Order — its link details (the checkout or order status page, and the tracking link) are sent as short links too, and taps on them are counted. The same detail from your storefront or a form is sent as filled in, because anybody can type what those carry.

A short link is about 40 characters. The exact length depends on your text link address. A long link gets shorter, and a short one gets a little longer — https://yourstore.com on its own is 21 characters. The count under the message already includes this, so the parts and the price it shows are the ones you will be charged for. The phone beside the message shows each short link the same way, so the text you see is as long as the text that is sent.

An address without https:// is sent as you typed it. yourstore.com on its own stays exactly as it is, and taps on it are not counted. Most phones still make it tappable.

A preview we can recognize is not a tap. Some phones and carriers open a link on their own to draw a preview of it. We keep a record of the ones we can recognize and do not count them as a tap. A preview that looks just like a person opening the link may still be counted.

Orders after a tap. An order placed within 5 days of a tap on a link in your text counts for that text on the campaign's report. An order counts once. A discount code from one of your email campaigns comes first: an order paid with one counts for that campaign. Otherwise, if the same person also clicked a link in one of your emails, the most recent click or tap gets it. A discount code a text handed out does not count an order yet.

Only marketing texts are shortened. A reply you type in Conversations, and the texts we send on your store's behalf — the opt-in code, the confirmation of a STOP — go out exactly as written.

The "Text me" box at checkout

Shopify's checkout has its own "Text me with news and offers" box, and its own "Email me with news and offers" box beside it. Both are Shopify's, not ours, and a tick in either reaches us as consent.

Their wording lives in your store's theme. That is what makes them easy to lose: publish a different theme, or install an update to yours, and Shopify puts its own default wording back without telling you. For the email box that only costs you a better sentence. For the text box it costs more, because Shopify's default says nothing about how often you text, that message and data rates may apply, or that people can reply HELP or STOP — and carriers expect exactly that wherever somebody agrees to receive texts.

So we watch it for you. The Checkout sign-up wording card reads the wording from your live theme every time you open this page, again whenever you publish a theme, and once a day besides. It shows what the box says right now, and whether it still carries the disclosure. While all is well the card sits at the bottom of the Settings tab.

If the disclosure is gone, the card moves to the top of the page, above the tabs, and the owner and managers of your store get one email about it — one, not one a day. The card gives you the corrected wording: your own opening sentence, kept, followed by the short disclosure carriers look for — that the texts are recurring and automated, that consent is not required to buy, how often you text, that rates may apply, and HELP and STOP.

Press the copy button in the corner of the wording, then:

  1. Press Open checkout settings, under the steps on the card.
  2. Under Marketing opt-in → SMS, make sure the box is shown at checkout (for example Checkout only), then press the pencil beside the box's wording — "Text me with news and offers", unless you changed it.
  3. Paste the wording into Accept SMS checkbox label.
  4. Press Save in the Unsaved changes bar at the top.

Use Chrome for this step. In Safari, Shopify's editor does not show the Save button right now.

That is all — no code, and nothing in your theme's files. The next time the card reads your store it will say the disclosure is there, and if it is ever lost again you will be told again.

We cannot make the change for you: Shopify does not let apps change this wording, so the paste is yours to do. It takes a minute.

The email box has no rules like that. It has its own card on Settings → Email, which shows what it says and offers a clearer line to copy.

Keep the text box about news and offers. A checkout sign-up that promises order or shipping updates is one carriers send back, because your number is registered for marketing texts.

What a text costs

Texts are billed by the part — $0.0183 a part in the US and Canada. You pay for each message part, not for each text.

One part holds 160 characters. A longer text is sent in parts of 153.

An emoji or a special character makes every part smaller: 70 characters, or 67 each in a longer text. A curly quote counts as a special character. So a single emoji can turn a one-part text into a two-part one, and double what it costs.

A text with an image or your contact card goes as a multimedia message (MMS): $0.0446 for each image or card, however long the words are. Images must be a JPEG, PNG or GIF of 300 KB or less.

You do not have to work any of this out. The campaign screen counts the characters and the parts as you type, and shows about what the text will cost — per person and for everyone it can reach. The price per part is on the pricing page on our site.

The count is a best estimate. Names are different lengths, so the final number of parts is counted for each person when their text is sent.

What a day of texts can cost you is capped too — see Your daily spending limit.

Your store's name at the front and "Reply STOP to opt out." at the end are part of every marketing text, so they count too. A text to a Canadian number also ends with your contact line (see Texting people in Canada), and that counts as well.

How your texts go out

Four settings, on the Settings tab, and they apply to everything you send. You can set them at any time; they take effect once your number is approved — until then nothing is going out.

How your texts name you also appears in step 2 of the registration while you are filling it in, because the first text the carrier is shown is built from it. It is one setting: changing it in either place changes it in both.

Changes on either tab are kept while you move between them, and one Save saves them all.

The hours

Texts go out between the hours you choose, in each person's own local time — not yours: their location's, or their phone number's area code's when we do not know their location. The one exception is somebody we cannot place — neither of those tells us their clock: for them your hours are read on your store's clock, because we do not know theirs — and if your store has no time zone yet, they are excluded and the law's hours alone decide.

The law sets its own hours, state by state, and yours are applied inside them. In Canada, where no law sets them, the hours are 8am to 9pm. Widening your window never widens theirs: if you say 8am and the law where somebody lives says 9am, they get theirs at 9am. Narrowing it works exactly as you would expect. The Quiet hours for texts page covers the rest, including what happens when we do not know where somebody is.

How your texts name you

This goes at the front of every marketing text you send. A text nobody can place is a text that gets reported, and reports are what cost a number its registration. Usually your store's name, kept short — every character of it is part of what you pay for.

The box starts out with your store's own name already in it, so you have nothing to do here unless your texts should say something else. Type over it to change it, or empty the box to come back to your store's name — and if you rename your store later, your texts follow.

Forwarding calls

Sometimes a person will call the number they were texted from. Put the phone number where you take calls here, such as your shop line or call center. If this is left empty, a caller hears nothing.

When you save, we ask the phone carrier behind your text-message number to pass calls on, and the line under the box tells you what it confirmed:

The number has to be an ordinary US or Canadian phone number, and it can't be your text-message number itself. Calls can't be forwarded to Puerto Rico or the other US territories, or to premium-rate numbers such as 900 numbers. To stop forwarding, empty the box and save.

Your daily spending limit

Your texts stop for the day once they have cost a set amount, so a mistake — a send to the wrong list, an automation set up wrong — can never cost you more than that in a day. The limit starts at $100 a day: at today's prices that is about 5,400 one-part texts, or about 2,200 texts with an image or your contact card, which covers a send to a few thousand people. Change it in the Daily spending limit for texts, in dollars box: any whole dollar amount from 1 to 100,000. If you text more people than the limit covers, raise it before you send.

Texts over the limit wait. Once a day's texts reach the limit, the rest wait until the next day starts, then go out: a campaign carries on where it stopped, and an automation sends the step it was waiting on. The day starts at midnight UTC, which is 8pm Eastern in summer and 7pm in winter.

One thing to plan for: a campaign has three days to reach everyone. A campaign bigger than three days of your limit does not reach the people left over when those three days are up, so raise the limit before you send a campaign that size. The campaign builder tells you when a text campaign is that big — on the message step and again before you send it: At your $X daily limit this would take about N days, and texts not sent within 3 days are dropped. Raise your limit in Settings → Text messages to reach everyone. It counts what your texts have already spent today.

It is counted at your prices. A text costs its message parts, and a text with an image or your contact card counts once per image, as one multimedia message (MMS) for each image, whatever its words come to (see What a text costs).

Three kinds of text are never held back by the limit: the reply the law requires when somebody texts STOP or HELP, the Easy Opt-in code a form texts somebody to confirm their number (they are waiting for it on your site), and the replies you type yourself in Conversations. They still count toward the day. Everything else waits: campaigns, automations, and the first text that welcomes somebody to your texts.

We also set the same limit with the phone carrier behind your number, as a second safety line. You do not need to do anything for that: it is set when your number is bought, kept in step whenever you save a new limit, and set for you if your number came before the limit did.

A raise counts once the phone carrier confirms it. Until then the carrier still stops texts at your old limit, so we do too, and the box says so: The phone carrier hasn't confirmed your new limit yet, with the figure texts stop at for now. We ask again on our own every few minutes; Try again asks at once. Lowering the limit takes effect straight away.

Your contact card

A contact card lets the people you text save your store to their phone's contacts in one tap, so your texts arrive under your name instead of a number they do not recognize. You set it up once, on the Settings tab, under Contact card:

Beside the boxes is a preview of how the card looks once it is saved on an iPhone. The card has its own Save card button, and Remove card takes it down.

Saving a card sends nothing. You attach it to a text with the Attach your contact card button beside the words: in an automation, in a Text message step — the Steps in an automation help page says how — and in a text campaign, under the message — the Campaigns help page says how.

A text with an image or your contact card goes as a multimedia message (MMS): $0.0446 for each image or card, however long the words are, and never also as text message parts. The pricing page lists it beside every other rate. The card goes only where the text would: nobody is texted because a card is attached, and every rule about who may be texted, and when, is the same with a card as without one.

If you remove the card later, texts that were set to attach it go out as words only until you save a card again — a campaign already scheduled with it included.

When somebody texts HELP

They get an answer straight away, at any hour, from your number. It names your store, says how often you text and that message and data rates may apply, says how to reach you, and says how to stop. How to reach you is your store's public contact email from Shopify (Settings → Store details), or your website if there is none. Everybody who texts HELP gets it — somebody none of your profiles has the number of too, and somebody who texted STOP — and it still goes while you have paused your texts or reached your spending limit. There is nothing to set up, and the carrier is told the same words when you register your number.

Reply to new numbers

When somebody texts your number from a number that is not on any of your profiles, they get one automatic reply — once per number, ever. It thanks them, says you do not have their number on file yet, and tells them how to sign up for your texts and how to reach you. It is enabled when your store starts texting; Disable on the Settings tab, under Reply to new numbers, stops it, and Enable starts it again. Neither one saves or throws away words you are still typing — only Save reply saves them. What the switch did is said beside the switch; the line beside Save reply is only ever about your words.

The words are yours to change. Your store's details show in the box as chips, and Add a detail puts one in where you are typing. The default thanks them for texting Store name, says you do not have their number on file yet, offers your Sign-up page to chat with you and get your texts, and gives your Store email for questions.

Beside the box is a preview of exactly what they receive. When nothing would be sent, it says which detail is missing — the sign-up page, the store email, both, or the store name — and says so plainly when your words do not name your store at all, or when the box is empty. A sign-up link goes out shortened on your own text-link address when you have one, like every link in your texts.

When it goes. Within minutes of their text, at any hour: it answers a text they have just sent, so it does not wait for the morning.

Who never gets it. A number on any profile. A number that has texted STOP and not START since. A number you were asked never to text again. STOP, START and HELP themselves, and a text that might be asking you to stop. And nobody gets it twice: a number we have answered once is never answered again, even after its texts are deleted at 30 days — we keep a scrambled fingerprint of the number for that, never the number itself.

It is billed like any text you send, and it counts toward your daily and monthly spending limits. A store at its daily limit sends the reply after midnight UTC, when the limit resets, as long as that is within a day of their text; a store over its monthly limit, or without a plan that covers texts, sends no reply.

Keywords

Keywords are your own words, such as SELFIE, VIP or PARTY, added on the Settings tab under Keywords. Type one and press Add keyword; the trash button beside a keyword removes it. You can have up to 20, each one word of letters and numbers, and it does not matter how somebody capitalizes it. A keyword a live or paused automation uses — in its start, in a split, or as the last keyword left for a start that takes any keyword — can't be removed until you change that automation. The card names the automation.

When somebody whose number is on one of your profiles texts exactly one of your keywords — the whole text is the word, with or without an image — Texted Keyword is recorded on their profile with the word, and any image they send is kept on their profile the way every image texted to you is. A text that only contains the word, such as "can I get the SELFIE deal", is an ordinary text.

An automation can start on it: see Starting when somebody texts a keyword on the What starts an automation page.

Texting a keyword is not consent. Somebody who texts SELFIE has not agreed to your marketing texts by doing it. An automation a keyword starts sends its texts only to people who already agreed to your texts, and its emails only to people who agreed to your emails — exactly as every other automation does.

A number that is not on any of your profiles starts nothing. Its text arrives in Conversations as it always did, and it may get your Reply to new numbers text.

STOP, START, HELP and the other opt-out words always win. They cannot be added as keywords, and a text that holds one — "SELFIE STOP", say — does only what that word does, never what the keyword does.

Saved replies

Your team's ready-made answers live in Conversations, on its Saved replies tab, and in the All saved replies window beside every reply box — where they are added, changed and used. The Conversations help page explains how.

Sending yourself a test

You can see a text exactly as it arrives — your store's name in front, your words with a person's details filled in, your links as they go out, and "Reply STOP to opt out." at the end — before anybody else gets it. Send a test works on a text campaign and on a text step in an automation.

First, add your mobile number. Each person on your team who can send tests adds their own number once and confirms it — in the Send a test card itself, or under Your mobile number for testing text messages in Settings → Team. Your store texts a six-digit code to it, from your store's number and in your store's name, and you type the code back; it is confirmed as soon as the sixth digit is in, and you are added to the test. To change or remove a confirmed number, go to Your mobile number for testing text messages in Settings → Team. Nobody can send a test to a number until it is confirmed, which is what keeps your store's number from ever texting a stranger. A code works for 10 minutes and five tries. You can ask for a new one after 30 seconds, and for up to five without an hour's pause. If you change your number, you confirm the new one the same way. If you leave the team, or the app is uninstalled, your number is removed and you confirm it again when you come back. You are not billed for the code. Because it comes from your store's number, your number has to be approved and enabled first.

Then send it. A test goes to your team, and only your team — never to one of your profiles. Beside To, choose up to three people on your team; anyone whose number is not confirmed yet is shown with a dashed outline and cannot be chosen until they add theirs. Once your number is confirmed you are already chosen, so a test is one press of Send a test. There is nowhere to type a number in. Until your store's text messages are enabled and its number is approved, the card says so instead. After a test, the answer shows in the card right above the button: Test sent, Test partly sent or Test not sent, and one line for each person saying what happened to their copy. Press Send a test again to send another.

Whose details fill it. Previewing as, at the top of the card, says whose details fill every copy. On a campaign it is a sample person, Jennifer, until you press Choose a profile, and Use the sample goes back. In an automation the card is there only while you preview the automation as a person — outside it, the step's Send a test asks who first — and it names that person and, for an automation that starts from an event, one of their events under Event, their most recent at first. A text that gives a discount away shows the code the preview shows.

A test goes out like a real text. It comes from your store's number, with your store's name and the STOP line. It goes out right away, whatever the hour, because you asked for it. It is still refused for a number that has texted STOP to your store, a number your store has stopped texting for good, or a number belonging to anyone who has ever marked your messages as spam — and the card says which.

A test is billed like any text — by the part, on your bill. A test cannot be sent on the Free plan; it is not sent later. A test never counts as a send of the campaign or automation in your reports.

Who can do what

Anyone who can send a test email can send a test of a text message, and can add and confirm their own mobile number to receive one. A viewer cannot. Only you can add or change your own number; our own staff cannot add one for you or send a test in your name.

Enabling the channel, changing the hours, the name, the forwarding number, the daily spending limit, the contact card and the reply to new numbers are a manager's or the owner's. Anyone on your team can see what the card and the reply say.

Filling in and sending the registration is the owner's alone. It buys a number for your store and signs a declaration in your business's legal name, with your EIN on it, so it takes the person who owns the store. A manager sees where the registration has got to and what the carrier said. In place of the form they see one of two sentences, depending on where things stand:

The registration's details — your EIN and the named contact's email address and phone number — are not shown to anyone else, a manager included.

It is not something we will ever do for you either, and it is not something our own staff can do on your behalf even when they are helping you with something else.

What we never do

We never text anybody on your behalf without your say-so (the one reply to a new number is yours to disable), we never file a registration for you, and we never promise you a carrier's answer. What this screen does is check what it can, count what it can, show you what somebody else said, and refuse to do the things that are yours.