Ever hit “send” on an SMS campaign then sit there and wonder about its delivery (or what it’s costing you)? Aloware’s SMS Length Calculator is your solution, a free tool designed to analyze your text messages and offer more insight to your message composition.
Table of Contents
What is the SMS Length Calculator
Our SMS length calculator checks messages for encoding, length, segmentation, and special characters before sending to make sure your texts arrive exactly as you intended. The calculator does all the hard work for you so you can spot any potential hiccups before they reach your customer. With insights into cost, readability, and deliverability, this tool keeps your messages sharp and your budget in check.
How to use this tool
Copy. Paste. Optimize. That’s it! Just drop your message into the calculator on our website and we will return how many segments are in your message, the message length, encoding type, and a cost estimate. To avoid multi-segment messages (which result in higher costs), prevent your messages from getting cut off, and improve deliverability, make adjustments to your message right within the calculator.
Why SMS messages have limitations
Ever wonder why SMS messages need to be so short? It’s all about keeping things reliable. SMS was built to get messages out fast and efficiently, resulting in rather strict messaging limitations. These limits help ensure messages are transmitted quickly and reliably across different carriers and devices worldwide. Let’s break down the key elements:
Segments
SMS messages have character limits: 160 for GSM-7 or 70 for UCS-2 (Unicode). If a message is longer, it’s split into “segments” to keep it within those limits. And here’s the catch: every segment is billed as a separate message, meaning a 4-segment SMS will cost you the same as 4 texts. With the SMS Length Calculator, you’ll know exactly how many segments your message consists of, saving you from any billing shocks.
Multipart messages
Once your message is split into segments, it’s reassembled on the recipient’s phone to look like one seamless message. While it appears as a single text on their end, each segment racks up its own charge on yours. A preview in the calculator lets you see how the message is segmented so you can make any necessary adjustments to bring it down to your desired size.
Encoding & emojis
There are two types of encoding for SMS, GSM-7 encoding and UCS-2 (or Unicode) encoding. Depending on the character set of your message, our calculator automatically detects the encoding type.
GSM-7 is the standard character encoding used for SMS messages, each SMS segment can contain up to 160 characters. It supports most characters found in Latin-based languages, such as English, French, and Nordic languages. The encoding also includes all punctuation marks and many commonly used special symbols.
UCS-2 is used when the standard GSM-7 encoding isn’t sufficient, each SMS segment can contain up to 70 characters. It supports over 65,000 characters, including those from East Asian languages (such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Arabic, and many special characters not covered by GSM-7. UCS-2 also supports emojis, which are not available in GSM-7 encoding. Emojis are fun but cost extra space—so use them wisely!
Emoji impact: A quick example
Let’s see the difference emojis can make on SMS cost. Here’s a message with emojis:
Encoding: UCS-2
Cost: 5 segments
Now, let’s remove those emojis:
Encoding: GSM-7
Cost: 2 segments
As you can see, emojis may add some flair, but they can also increase costs. Use the SMS Length Calculator to preview how encoding changes based on your message style and save on segments when you can!
Why you want the SMS Length Calculator
This tool keeps your SMS campaigns on point. By identifying and addressing any potential formatting issues upfront, it saves you on unnecessary charges and ensures your messages look great on delivery. With the SMS Length Calculator, you can:
- Keep track of character counts – no more guessing about what fits in a segment.
- Estimate costs upfront – know exactly what each message costs and why.
Why we built this tool
If you’re using Aloware’s Broadcast feature or HubSpot integration to run SMS campaigns, we built the SMS Length Calculator just for you. Our goal? To give you full control over your messages and help you get the best out of each campaign. With a quick preview of how your messages will turn out on the other side, you can avoid surprises and make smart tweaks to your message composition.
Ready to keep your SMS campaigns sharp, clear, and cost-effective? Try out our SMS Length Calculator!
