At €0.05 per SMS, 1,000 messages sent to invalid numbers burn €50 of budget without a single one being read.
A standard SMS under 160 characters costs between €0.04 and €0.08, depending on sending volume (AllMySMS, 2025), though the publisher does not say whether this rate excludes VAT. Providers’ pricing grids are most often shown excluding tax, so compare offers on the same basis. Premium SMS adds a sender ID (a custom sender name), 764 characters or more per message and international delivery. For business SMS campaigns in France to a clean list, low-cost SMS is enough. OTP codes and brand-name senders belong to premium.
Price per SMS: the tiers of volume pricing
The more you send, the lower the unit price: that is volume discount pricing. AllMySMS puts a standard SMS between €0.04 and €0.08. For 10,000 SMS, the campaign therefore costs €400 at the low tier and €800 at the high tier. A message longer than 160 characters is split in two and billed twice. RCS, the rich SMS with images or carousels, runs around €0.10 to €0.15 at the same provider.
Five factors move the bill before you even choose between low-cost and premium:
- sending volume and destination, with international rates set by the foreign carriers;
- sender type: a brand name costs more than a number;
- options such as click tracking, a landing page or personalization;
- subscription or onboarding fees charged by the platform;
- renting a contact list, if you do.
The advertised rate can come on top of subscription fees, which depend on the SMS provider. Transactional SMS (parcel tracking, delivery confirmation) are often cheaper than standard ones because their volumes are higher.
Low-cost or premium: the side-by-side comparison
The SMS route links the sending platform to the recipient’s carrier, through an aggregator or a direct connection. Routing affects delivery time and filtering. It explains the price gap and the low-cost limits listed below.
| Criterion | Low-cost SMS | Premium SMS |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Numeric sender, cheaper than a name (AllMySMS) | Named sender, billed higher (AllMySMS) |
| Length | 160 characters, 146 usable with the STOP mention | 764 characters per SMS at Octopush, 800 at SMS Partner |
| Sender | 10-digit number | Customizable brand name (sender ID) |
| Coverage | French numbers only | International, price depends on the country |
| Delivery time | Longer as the volume sent grows | Sent at the chosen time, advertised as instant |
The 160 and 764 character lengths, the customizable sender and international delivery come from the comparison Octopush published in 2021 (in French). The 10-digit number, the longer delivery time and the 800 characters of premium are described by SMS Partner, another SMS vendor. Both vendors have a commercial interest in the comparison, and offers have changed since: check the limits in your platform’s terms before ordering.
Both offers let you schedule a send for a precise date and time and personalize the message with the recipient’s first name. Only the sender and the coverage really change, along with the length.
The variable delivery time raises a deeper question. Gray routes, channels with no contract with the recipient’s carrier, are used to cut sending costs and face stricter carrier filtering, as the article on SMS deliverability at carriers explains.
Cutting SMS costs: the real price of an undelivered SMS
The unit rate ignores the cost per delivered SMS. To work it out:
- Take the rate of your tier, for example €0.05.
- Multiply it by the number of numbers in your list: 10,000 numbers cost €500.
- Find the dead numbers: invalid, landline, incomplete or duplicate. Every 1,000 of them represents €50. Count them.
- Divide the budget by the number of SMS actually delivered.
With 800 dead lines out of 10,000 (a value picked for the demonstration), 9,200 SMS arrive for €500: the cost rises to €0.054 per delivered SMS, 8.7% above the advertised rate.
Part of the loss stays invisible. A platform’s “delivered” status does not prove the message appeared on a screen: the chain can break at the carrier without a complete receipt. Whether an undelivered SMS is billed depends on each platform’s terms. Read them before you sign.
Two levers lower this cost per delivered SMS. Moving up to the next volume tier cuts the unit price but commits a heavier budget. Removing dead numbers before sending works with your existing list and on the same platform. In the example above, removing those 800 lines saves €40 on the 10,000-SMS campaign.
AllMySMS reports a 98% read rate and a 15 to 35% click rate depending on the sector. Its ROI example shows what is at stake. For 1,000 SMS at €0.05 (€50), 50 customers at a €25 average basket bring in €1,250 in revenue, a 2,400% ROI. Each dead number cuts that result in the same way.
Marketing or OTP: which offer for which message
An OTP code has a short validity, often a few minutes. On an offer whose sending delay grows with volume, it risks arriving too late to be useful. An undelivered OTP can lock the customer out of their login, so critical notifications belong on a reliable route. Transactional SMS are handled separately from promotions.
- Low-cost: a planned promotion in France, a message under 146 usable characters, no time pressure.
- Premium: OTP, appointment reminders, long messages or sending outside France, whenever the brand name must show.
An SMS from an anonymous number looks like smishing, the fraudulent SMS that the CNIL, France’s data protection authority, asks recipients to report to 33700. For long content or no urgency, compare with email marketing in SMS marketing vs email.
Phone number quality: the cost line pricing grids ignore
A pricing grid shows the price of the SMS and ignores the list that receives it. Yet a number list contains landlines and duplicates, plus incomplete or cancelled numbers. The article on keeping your customer file up to date ties an unmaintained list to lost money and skewed statistics.
An HLR lookup, a query sent to the network to find out whether a mobile number is active, lets you remove dead lines before sending. Clean the list before the campaign, then again after the first delivery reports, when failed numbers show up, as the article on the up-to-date customer file recommends. CaptainVerify offers this verification and mobile data cleaning. Once the list is clean, segmenting by age or interest tailors each message.
Before your next campaign, run a sample of the list through a phone number verification and multiply the number of invalid ones by your unit rate.
Consent, STOP and sending hours: what the rate does not cover
The CNIL, which applies the GDPR to SMS prospecting, requires prior consent: a positive action, such as an unticked checkbox (CNIL page on SMS prospecting, in French, 2026). The exception for customers of similar products disappears without an actual sale, even if the contact created an online account. Every message names the sender and offers a simple way to refuse, which is the role of STOP SMS.
The guide to SMS opt-in messages gives compliant wording and the time windows of the French AF2M charter. Choosing the send slot has its own guide: when to send a marketing SMS. Missing consent tops the list of 11 mistakes to avoid in an SMS campaign.
Frequently asked questions about buying SMS
Do I need an SMS subscription to buy credits?
It depends on the platform. AllMySMS lists onboarding or subscription fees among the factors that change the price. Add the monthly subscription to the cost of the SMS, then divide by the number of delivered SMS to compare two offers.
Does an SMS over 160 characters cost more?
Yes. A message split into two texts is billed twice (AllMySMS, 2025). With the STOP mention, 146 usable characters remain on a low-cost offer according to Octopush (2021).
Can you send a low-cost SMS abroad?
International sending falls under premium SMS. Octopush says prices vary by country and can be lower than a low-cost SMS delivered in France.
