Q: SMS sending costs higher than advertised!
Hello, I did a test message send that worked very well. However, sending 2 SMS cost me €0.17, which is €0.0850 per message for sending in France. However, when I go to the SMS calculator in Intrasent and choose France, it tells me that sending 1 SMS costs €0.0425. Could you please explain the difference in cost between what you advertise and what it actually costs? It is also for having sending costs at €0.0425 for France that I decided to come to you.
Hector_InstasentSMS
Mar 4, 2025A: Hello Nicolas! 👋
Glad to hear your test message worked well! 🚀
The difference in cost is likely due to message length. 1 SMS = 160 characters (GSM standard). If your message exceeds this limit, it gets split into multiple SMS, and you are billed for each part. This is what’s known as a concatenated message, and it’s standard across all SMS providers.
So if you sent a longer message, it was counted as two SMS, which explains the cost. If you want to optimize costs, try keeping messages within 160 characters. 😊
Let me know if you need more details!
Best,
Nicolas_SPLUS
Verified purchaser
Hello Hector, thank you for your response. But my message was only 80 characters long.
Hello! The most likely reason is Unicode characters.
Special characters (like accented letters or non-Latin alphabets) are encoded in UTF-8 Unicode, a global industry standard. This reduces the SMS length from 160 to 70 characters per message.
Instasent provides a total SMS counter and a Unicode notice when such characters are detected, so you can review and adjust your message if needed.