MMS
Same campaign, same consent, more pixels, higher price. Declare media in registration and keep imagery inside CTIA content rules.
MMS extends the SMS channel with media — product images, coupons with barcodes, GIFs — and a much higher character ceiling (~1,600 characters without segmentation). Engagement typically rises with the format; so does cost: providers price MMS at roughly 2-3x SMS, and carrier surcharges are higher per message.
Compliance-wise MMS is not a separate regime: it rides on the same registered 10DLC campaign (declare media use in registration where asked), the same consent tiers apply, and STOP/HELP handling is unchanged. CTIA content rules apply to the media itself — imagery violating SHAFT categories gets campaigns suspended regardless of the text.
Deliverability nuance: MMS goes through transcoding gateways and aggressive handset-level rendering differences. Test across carriers, keep files inside common limits (≤500KB-1MB depending on route), and have an SMS fallback for failed media delivery.
Frequently asked questions
Related glossary terms
A message segment is the billing unit of SMS: 160 GSM-7 characters per single message, 153 per segment when concatenated, and only 70 (67 concatenated) when Unicode characters like emoji are present.
Carrier surcharges are per-segment fees ($0.0025-$0.01 typical) that US carriers charge on A2P SMS, passed through by providers on top of the base message price. Registered traffic pays lower rates than unregistered.
A 10DLC use case is the declared purpose of a registered campaign — Marketing, Customer Care, Account Notifications, 2FA, Mixed, or a special use case. Actual traffic must match the declaration.