Choosing the Right SMS Bundle Size for Your Business

SMS bundles are priced so that larger bundles cost less per message - which means guessing too small and topping up repeatedly usually costs more overall than buying a size that actually matches your real usage. A little estimation upfront pays for itself.

Start from what you're already sending

If you're moving from another channel or from manual texting, you likely already have a rough number: how many customers get a reminder each week, how many people are on your promotional list, how often you run a campaign. Multiply that out to a monthly figure before looking at bundle sizes - it's a more reliable starting point than guessing.

Account for concatenated and Unicode messages

As covered in our character limits guide, a message over 160 plain-text characters - or any message containing an emoji or certain special characters - can be billed as more than one credit per recipient. If your templates regularly run long or include emoji, budget your bundle size a bit above the raw "one message per recipient" estimate.

Separate transactional volume from marketing volume

A business sending both order confirmations and monthly promotions should estimate each separately - transactional volume tends to be steady and predictable, while marketing volume spikes around specific campaigns. Adding them together gives a more realistic total than estimating either alone.

A simple way to decide

• Estimate your realistic monthly SMS volume from current operations, not a hopeful projection
• Check the per-SMS cost of each bundle size - bigger bundles bring the unit cost down
• If usage is steady month to month, a subscription plan with included SMS may work out cheaper than repeated bundle top-ups
• If usage is seasonal or unpredictable, a pay-as-you-go bundle avoids paying for a subscription tier you don't consistently use

See our pricing page for current bundle sizes and per-SMS cost, and our guide on subscription plans vs pay-as-you-go bundles for help deciding between the two models.