Every question gets a number, not a shrug

No. The TCPA requires prior express written consent before marketing texts: a signed agreement (e-signature counts) with a clear disclosure, and consent can never be a condition of purchase. Past customers do not count as consent; the opt-in must be documented separately. Statutory damages run $500 per text and up to $1,500 when willful, with no cap on the total.

No. The Eleventh Circuit vacated it in January 2025, in IMC v. FCC, before it ever took effect, and the FCC formally dropped it. The older prior-express-written-consent standard governs in 2026. Do not relax, though: the April 2025 revocation rule and a surge in quiet-hours class actions mean enforcement pressure moved, not disappeared.

Since April 11, 2025, a consumer can revoke consent by any reasonable method, not just the word STOP: QUIT, END, REVOKE, OPTOUT, CANCEL, and UNSUBSCRIBE all count, and you cannot force an exclusive opt-out channel. Revocations must be honored within 10 business days. The broader rule making one opt-out cover all message types was delayed to late January 2027.

Federal rules prohibit marketing texts before 8am or after 9pm in the recipient's local time zone. Several states go further: Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington cut off at 8pm, and Texas allows 9am to 9pm with a noon start on Sundays. Quiet-hours class actions were among the most-filed TCPA suits of 2025 and 2026, so timing QA is not optional.

The CTIA's SHAFT-C categories: sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco, and cannabis, the last banned on A2P routes even where state law allows the product. Carriers also filter for missing opt-in proof, public URL shorteners, identical high-volume blasts, and volume ramps that outrun your trust score. Twilio surfaces most of this as error 30007.

On Postscript, $0.007 to $0.009 per SMS depending on tier; Klaviyo SMS credits land around $0.009 to $0.012; raw Twilio is $0.0083 per segment. Carriers add pass-through fees of $0.0035 (AT&T) to $0.0045 (T-Mobile, Verizon) per segment, and MMS costs roughly three times more. A message over 160 GSM-7 characters bills as multiple segments.

Budget roughly $44 to $48 one-time for standard brand registration, $15 vetting per campaign, and $1.50 to $10 monthly per campaign depending on use case. Registration itself files in days; carrier vetting can add one to three weeks. Toll-free verification is free and typically clears in 3 to 5 business days, at 3 messages per second once verified.

Published rates are rare. Listicles peg established retention agencies around $3,000 to $3,500 monthly, and the one commonly published figure is $5,550 per month for a combined email and SMS package. Our rates are public: a $1,500 audit, a $4,200 launch package, and a $2,900 monthly retainer, detailed on the Pricing page with full scope.

Rough cut: Shopify stores under about $5M in revenue fit Postscript or Klaviyo SMS, and Klaviyo wins when email already lives there since segments and credits share one roof. Attentive targets enterprise brands with custom quotes and quarterly minimums. Entry tools like SimpleTexting at $39 monthly or EZ Texting at $25 suit local businesses more than ecommerce.

Most brands start on 10DLC long codes: cheap, branded local numbers with throughput set by trust score, up to 225 messages per second at top scores. Verified toll-free numbers give 3 messages per second at zero lease cost. Short codes carry $500 monthly leases ($1,000 vanity) and make sense once send volume and speed genuinely demand them.

No one can prove it: SMS has no open tracking, and the figure traces to decades-old estimates repeated without measurement. Use surveyed behavior instead. SimpleTexting's January 2026 survey found 74% of consumers check a new text within five minutes and 23% within one minute. That is the honest version of the claim, and it is still remarkable.

Checkout opt-in first, because purchase intent is peaking; a popup with an SMS-exclusive offer second; keyword joins third. 89% of US consumers already take texts from businesses per EZ Texting's 2026 report, and 62% will opt in before a first purchase when the trade is clear. Every surface needs express-written-consent language, or growth becomes liability.

Frequency is the top opt-out trigger, named by 40% of consumers in EZ Texting's survey and 55% in SimpleTexting's. We run four to eight campaigns monthly with per-subscriber caps, and watch opt-outs per send against Postscript's 0.33 to 0.88% band. When a send pushes past that band, the next one waits. Flows are exempt from the math; blasts are not.