Help · Campaigns

Texting rules

Marketing texts are tightly regulated, and the penalties are real. The app holds every text you send to the timing, frequency, consent and opt-out rules, and it checks them again at the moment each text goes. What your texts say, and a few things that happen outside the app, stay yours. This page is a plain summary, not legal advice.

The rules, in brief

Three layers apply to a marketing text in the United States: the federal law, the states that go further, and the carriers' own rules. A text has to satisfy all three, and the strictest rule that applies always wins.

• The federal law, known as the TCPA, asks for written consent before marketing texts, and it lets a person sue for $500 per violation, or $1,500 when the violation was willful or knowing. People must be able to stop your texts in plain words, not only with one keyword.
• Federal calling hours are 8am to 9pm in the person's own local time.
• Several states go further, with narrower hours, daily limits per phone number and their own right to sue. They include Maryland, Oklahoma, Florida, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona and Washington.
• The carriers set rules of their own: every sending number is registered and reviewed, consent records are kept, the stop and help keywords are honored, and whole categories of business are refused.

In Canada a different law applies, with its own rules on identifying yourself in every text. Your Terms of Service set all of this out in full, in Section 5 and Schedule A.

What the app does for you

These are checked on every text, by the app, with nothing for you to set up. Where something is not allowed, the text waits or is not sent, and you can see why.

• The hours. A marketing text goes out only inside the legal hours where the person is, read on their own clock. The states that stop at 8pm, and Texas, which starts at 9am and at noon on Sundays, are applied state by state. Your own Send between hours apply inside the law's, never beyond them.
• Somebody you cannot place. Their location comes first, then their phone number's area code. When neither tells us, they get the hours that are legal everywhere in the United States at once.
• The daily limits per phone number. Florida, Maryland and Oklahoma allow at most three marketing texts to one number in 24 hours. A fourth waits.
• One marketing text a day per person. This is the app's own limit, to keep people from tuning out. A text campaign has a switch, Ignore the one-text-a-day limit, for the times you mean to send a second one. It never lifts the states' limits or the hours.
• Consent, checked at the moment of sending. A marketing text goes only to somebody whose consent to your texts is on record, and only to the number they agreed on. Email consent never counts for texts.
• A record of every consent. Each change is kept with when it happened, where it came from and which phone number it was for.
• The six-digit code. A number typed into one of your forms is not consent until the person types back the code texted to it, so nobody can sign up a number that is not theirs.
• Your sign-up wording. A form panel that asks for a phone number cannot be published without its consent wording.
• Program details first. Before the first marketing text reaches a number, that number gets a text saying who you are, what you send, how often, that rates may apply, and how to stop.
• Your name and a way out, in every text. Your store's name goes at the front of every marketing text and "Reply STOP to opt out." at the end. A text without them is not sent.
• STOP and START. STOP, and the other stop words and plain requests to stop, mark the person Unsubscribed for texts straight away — ARRET, the French word, works the same — and your store's own customer record is updated too. START from the same number brings them back. A message that might be asking to stop waits for your team, and your marketing texts to that number wait with it.
• Do not text. A number in that state is never texted again, and nothing the person sends can undo it.
• Only people your store knows. A marketing text goes only to somebody whose identity real activity in your store has confirmed. A number that turns up with nothing behind it is held, not texted.
• Where texts can go. Only to numbers in the United States and Canada. A text to a Canadian number ends with a link to your contact page, and is sent between 9am and 9pm in the person's own time.
• Your registration, drafted for you. The registration the carrier reviews is filled in from your store, and the screen marks what the reviewer will check.
• The refused categories, asked first. Before a number is bought, you confirm your store sells none of the categories the carriers will not carry. Alcohol is the one exception, registered with age verification. The full list is on the Text messages page.

What stays yours

The app cannot see everything a text depends on. These parts are yours, and your Terms of Service make them so.

• What your texts say. Keep every offer truthful: no false urgency, no invented deadlines. In Washington, a "limited time" offer that is not limited can be a violation on its own.
• Who you text. Only people who gave your store consent to texts. Bought, rented, scraped or appended lists are not allowed, and neither is texting anybody cold, in any form.
• What a text may never be. Misleading about who sent it, missing your name or the way to stop, malware or phishing, a promotion of anything illegal, or anything that makes stopping harder to find or use.
• What your store sells. Your confirmation that it sells none of the refused categories has to stay true while your number is registered. If that changes, stop sending texts and tell us.
• Consent from outside the app. People you import keep the consent your old service recorded, and only people that service watched agree arrive confirmed. If you certify that a list agreed to texts with a previous provider, that certification is your statement, recorded with your name and the date.
• Your wording, policies and registration. Keep your sign-up wording, your privacy policy, your terms and your registration details accurate, and update them when your business changes. Never make agreeing to texts a condition of buying from you.
• Stops that reach you elsewhere. If somebody asks you to stop by email, on the phone or in person, mark them unsubscribed on their profile. Messages that might be asking to stop wait in Conversations for your team to decide.
• Your own copy of your records. The Terms ask you to keep consent records for at least five years after your last text to someone.

If you are unsure how a law applies to your store, ask a lawyer who knows it.

Where to read more

Each rule above has a page of its own with the details. Open Settings → Text messages to see your registration and your Send between hours.

• The Text messages page covers your number, the registration and the refused categories.
• The Quiet hours for texts page covers whose hours decide and how a person is placed.
• The Consent page covers every way text consent starts and ends.
• The Leaving your old texting service page covers the people you import and the text that tells them about your new number.
• The Conversations page covers replies and the messages that wait for your team.

The site's Text Message Policy and your Terms of Service carry the full wording. The policy also says what happens when a store's texts put people or other stores at risk: we slow that store's texts or stop them.