A2P 10DLC registration is the process every U.S. business must complete before sending text messages to customers from a software platform through a standard ten-digit phone number. You submit your legal business identity and a description of the messages you plan to send through your SMS service provider, which passes the information to The Campaign Registry. The registry verifies your business, assigns a trust score, and clears your traffic with the major carriers. Without it, your messages do not arrive: carriers now block 100% of unregistered A2P traffic on ten-digit numbers.
Who Has to Register
Any business or organization sending texts from an application to U.S. consumers has to register, regardless of size or volume. A dental office sending appointment reminders through scheduling software falls under the same requirement as a national retailer running promotions. CTIA’s framework treats any message sent by a business, organization, or someone acting on its behalf as non-consumer traffic subject to registration.1CTIA. Messaging Principles and Best Practices
You register as one of two brand types. Standard brands have a federal Employer Identification Number, can run multiple campaigns, and qualify for higher throughput.2Microsoft Learn. Ten-Digit Long Code (10DLC) Registration Guidelines Sole proprietor brands are individuals or small businesses without an EIN; they are limited to a single campaign tied to one phone number, and their sending is capped at 1,000 messages per day on T-Mobile and 15 per minute on AT&T. Sole proprietor registration adds a two-step identity check: a data validation followed by a one-time password sent to the registrant’s mobile number. Any given mobile number can be attached to no more than three sole proprietor brands across all service providers.
One boundary worth naming: this system covers messages sent from software to consumers. Texts you type by hand from your own personal phone are not A2P and do not require registration.
What to Gather Before You Start
Two categories of information drive the registration: who your business is, and what you plan to send. Mismatches in the first category cause more delays than anything else.
Business Identity
Your legal company name must match your IRS records exactly, suffixes included. The Campaign Registry verifies the name against your EIN, so pull up the IRS EIN confirmation letter and copy it character for character, keeping “LLC” or “Inc.” precisely as it appears.3Internal Revenue Service. About Form SS-4, Application for Employer Identification Number (EIN) You also need a working website that shows what your business does. A login page or a bare landing page without context will get flagged.
Website and Privacy Policy
Your site needs a privacy policy and terms of service linked in the footer, and both must speak to SMS specifically. A compliant SMS privacy policy should say what data you collect (phone numbers, names), how you use it, how you protect it, how long you keep it, and how recipients opt out. It should also state that you do not sell or share mobile data with third parties for their own marketing. If your legal entity name differs from the brand name on the site, put the legal name somewhere visible so reviewers can verify ownership.
Campaign Details
Each campaign has to be classified by use case: two-factor authentication, marketing, customer service, account notifications, and so on. Write a clear description of why you are texting consumers and what those messages will say. Vague descriptions like “general communication” invite rejection.
You also submit sample messages that match the type of texts you actually plan to send. Each sample should identify your organization by name. At least two should include opt-out language such as “Reply STOP to unsubscribe.” Use bracketed placeholders for variable content, like “[Customer Name]” or “[Appointment Date].”
The registration also asks for a detailed explanation of your opt-in process, meaning how customers agree to receive your texts. If people sign up through a web form, describe what the form says and where it appears. If consent happens in person or by phone, walk through that workflow. This is where reviewers look hardest, and vague answers about consent are a top rejection reason.
What It Costs
Fees are processed through your SMS service provider and paid to The Campaign Registry.
- Brand registration: a one-time fee of $4 to $5.
- Brand vetting: a one-time fee of roughly $40 to $42 for standard vetting, which produces your trust score.4Vonage API Support. 10 DLC Pricing and Fees
- Monthly campaign fees: low-volume mixed campaigns start around $1.50 per month, sole proprietor campaigns run $2, standard campaigns cost $10, and specialty use cases like charity or emergency services fall between $3 and $5.4Vonage API Support. 10 DLC Pricing and Fees
On top of these, carriers charge per-message pass-through fees for all A2P traffic, including registered traffic. These vary by carrier and change periodically. Budget for fractions of a cent per message segment on both SMS and MMS.
How Long Approval Takes
Once you submit through your provider’s portal, the information goes to The Campaign Registry, which runs an automated review of your business identity, compliance history, and company details.5The Campaign Registry. The Campaign Registry CSP User Guide Straightforward registrations are often approved instantaneously. When the registry needs more information or opens a manual review, turnaround can stretch to three to five weeks. Complex brands, unusual use cases, and incomplete submissions push you toward the longer end. Respond quickly to any follow-up emails; silence is what turns a two-week review into a five-week one.
What Your Trust Score Buys You
The vetting score, between 0 and 100, is the single most important number this process produces. It controls how many messages carriers will let you send, and each carrier enforces limits differently.
T-Mobile sets daily caps in four tiers:5The Campaign Registry. The Campaign Registry CSP User Guide
- Score 75–100: 200,000 messages per day
- Score 50–74: 40,000 per day
- Score 25–49: 10,000 per day
- Score 1–24: 2,000 per day
AT&T caps throughput per minute rather than per day. A high-tier brand can send 4,500 SMS segments per minute; a brand scoring below 50 is capped at 240 per minute. Verizon allows 100 SMS segments per second regardless of score.
The gap between tiers is large. A business with a low score trying to send a time-sensitive promotion to 10,000 T-Mobile customers will burn through its entire daily allowance in one blast, with nothing left for transactional messages. If your throughput feels restrictive, you can request enhanced vetting through your service provider; it costs extra but can move you into a higher tier.
Why Registrations Get Rejected
Rejections are common and usually fixable. The recurring failure points:
- EIN mismatch. Your submitted company name does not match the IRS EIN letter exactly. Even a missing “LLC” suffix triggers a rejection. Copy the name verbatim from the letter.
- Weak opt-in description. You described your consent process vaguely or failed to quote the actual language customers see before agreeing. Write out the words on your sign-up form.
- Website problems. Your site is down, lacks a privacy policy or terms of service in the footer, or does not show enough about your business to verify what you do.
- Privacy policy gaps. Your policy does not mention SMS, does not explain how phone numbers are used, or does not state that data is not sold or shared.
- Sample message issues. Your samples do not match your declared use case, do not identify your business by name, or lack opt-out instructions.
To appeal, fix the underlying problem first, then submit through your provider’s portal with a short written explanation of what changed. The appeal goes back into a manual review queue. Resubmitting without actually changing anything wastes time, because reviewers can see what was originally submitted.
Consent Rules You Still Owe
Registering for A2P 10DLC does not satisfy your obligations under federal law. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act still governs when and how you can text people, and the FCC enforces it separately from anything the carriers do.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 227 – Restrictions on the Use of Telephone Equipment
Informational messages, such as appointment reminders, delivery notifications, and account alerts, require prior express consent. If a customer voluntarily gives you their phone number in the course of doing business, that typically qualifies as long as the messages relate to the reason they gave you the number.
Marketing messages require prior express written consent, a higher bar. The customer must sign (physically or electronically) an agreement that clearly authorizes promotional texts, specifies the phone number, and discloses that consent is not a condition of purchasing anything. A pre-checked box buried in your terms of service does not count.
Every first message must also explain how to opt out. “Reply STOP to unsubscribe” is the standard phrasing, and CTIA’s best practices require that consumers be able to revoke consent at any time by replying with a keyword like STOP.1CTIA. Messaging Principles and Best Practices Failing to honor opt-outs, or omitting opt-out instructions, leads to immediate filtering and possible campaign suspension.
The TCPA restricts timing too. Telephone solicitation rules prohibit calls before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. in the recipient’s local time. Whether this window technically applies to texts is still debated in the courts, but the safest practice is to stay within those hours for any commercial messaging.
Carriers also prohibit or restrict specific content categories on 10DLC, including sexually explicit material, hate speech, cannabis, most third-party lending, debt consolidation, cryptocurrency promotions, lead generation, and multi-level marketing. If your messaging touches any of these, review the full carrier content policies before you build a campaign around them.710DLC.org. Forbidden Content
What Happens If You Skip It
Carriers now block 100% of unregistered A2P traffic on 10DLC numbers. If you have not registered, your messages simply do not arrive. This is not partial filtering; it is a complete blackout.
For registered businesses that violate content or conduct rules, the penalties escalate quickly. T-Mobile’s published fee schedule includes charges up to $10,000 per unique instance for repeat content violations, $10,000 for text-enabling a number and sending before verifying ownership, $2,000 for phishing and social engineering, and $1,000 for registration evasion techniques like snowshoeing. Beyond fines, carriers can suspend your campaign and blacklist your phone number, and a blacklisted number can struggle with delivery even after you re-register because carriers retain reputation data.
On top of carrier fines, TCPA violations carry statutory damages of $500 per message, tripled to $1,500 for willful violations, and can be brought as class actions.8Federal Communications Commission. Unlawful Communications The two systems run in parallel. Registration is the carriers’ gate; the TCPA is the law. You need to clear both.