10DLC compliance is the registration and approval process that U.S. businesses must complete before sending text messages to customers from a standard 10-digit phone number. If your company sends appointment reminders, marketing texts, order confirmations, or any other automated messages using a regular phone number, you need to register your business and your messaging campaigns with The Campaign Registry (TCR) through your messaging provider. Messages sent from unregistered 10-digit numbers are blocked by carriers outright.
Why 10DLC Registration Exists
For years, businesses sent automated texts using the same 10-digit local numbers designed for person-to-person calls. Carriers had no way to distinguish a dentist’s appointment reminder from a spam operation. 10DLC created a formal system for application-to-person (A2P) messaging, meaning any text a business sends to a consumer using software rather than typing it out by hand.
The system is built around carrier and CTIA guidelines. By requiring businesses to identify themselves and describe how they’ll use texting, carriers can filter out bad actors while giving legitimate senders better deliverability and higher sending speeds. Think of it as a verified sender system for SMS, similar to email authentication protocols that help keep spam out of inboxes.
Who Needs to Register
Any business or organization sending A2P text messages through a 10-digit long code in the United States must complete registration. This includes companies of all sizes, nonprofits, and sole proprietors. The requirement applies whether you’re sending five texts a day or five thousand.
There are two brand types in the registration system. Standard brands are businesses and organizations that have an Employer Identification Number (EIN). They can register multiple campaigns and qualify for higher message volume. Sole proprietor brands are individuals or small businesses without an EIN. They’re limited to a single campaign, lower message volume, and must verify their identity through alternative documentation like a mobile phone bill.
If you exclusively use short codes (those five- or six-digit numbers) or toll-free numbers for texting, 10DLC registration doesn’t apply to those channels. But the moment you send automated texts from a standard 10-digit number, you’re in 10DLC territory.
How the Registration Process Works
Registration happens in two stages: brand registration and campaign registration. You don’t register directly with TCR. Instead, your messaging service provider (called a Campaign Service Provider, or CSP) handles the process on your behalf. Companies like Twilio, Bandwidth, and similar platforms serve as CSPs, and most business texting tools are built on top of one of these providers.
During brand registration, your CSP submits your business details to TCR. This includes your legal business name, EIN, business address, and contact information. TCR’s system reviews this information and assigns your brand a Trust Score, a rating from 0 to 100 that reflects your company’s reputation. The score is generated through a reputation algorithm that evaluates publicly available data about your business. Larger, well-established companies tend to score higher.
Campaign registration is the second step. Here you describe each messaging use case: what type of messages you’ll send, sample message content, how consumers opt in to receive your texts, and how they can opt out. Each campaign gets reviewed before it’s approved. Once your CSP receives a Campaign ID from TCR, you can begin sending messages.
Trust Scores and Sending Limits
Your Trust Score directly controls how many messages you can send per second (throughput) and, on some networks, how many you can send per day. Higher scores unlock significantly faster sending speeds.
A brand with a Trust Score between 75 and 100 can send up to 225 SMS messages per second across major U.S. carriers, split roughly evenly among them at 75 messages per second each. A score between 50 and 74 drops that to 120 total messages per second. Brands scoring below 50, or those that skip the secondary vetting process, are limited to just 12 messages per second total.
Sole proprietor campaigns have fixed throughput with no Trust Score involved. They’re capped at 1,000 messages per day on T-Mobile’s network and 15 messages per minute on AT&T’s network per campaign. If you’re a small operation sending a modest number of texts, these limits may be perfectly workable. But if you’re running time-sensitive campaigns like flash sales or event reminders to a large list, the difference between 12 and 225 messages per second is the difference between messages arriving in seconds and trickling out over hours.
T-Mobile also enforces separate daily message limits toward its subscribers, independent of per-second throughput. These caps vary based on your brand and campaign type.
What Happens If You Don’t Comply
The most immediate consequence is simple: your messages won’t go through. Carriers block texts sent from unregistered 10-digit numbers, and your messaging platform will return an error code indicating the number isn’t registered for A2P traffic.
For registered senders who violate content or behavior rules, the penalties escalate quickly. T-Mobile’s fine structure is the most detailed and is passed through by messaging providers directly to the offending business. Content violations covering spam, phishing, and restricted content categories (known as SHAFT: sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, and tobacco) carry fines of $10,000 per violation. T-Mobile typically issues a warning before the first fine, but repeat offenses trigger immediate charges.
A tiered system applies to the most serious violations. Phishing and social engineering messages carry a $2,000 fine per occurrence with no warning period. Illegal content triggers $1,000 fines. Other commercial messaging violations, including SHAFT content that doesn’t follow federal and state regulations (such as missing age verification), result in $500 fines.
Spreading messages across multiple phone numbers to evade detection, a practice called snowshoeing, carries $1,000 fines. And if violations are deemed excessive, T-Mobile reserves the right to permanently suspend your brand, campaigns, and your company’s access to its entire network.
Content and Consent Requirements
Registration alone isn’t enough. Your messaging campaigns must follow specific content and consent rules that carriers and the CTIA enforce. The core requirements boil down to three principles: get permission before texting someone, tell them what they’re signing up for, and make it easy to stop.
Consent means the recipient actively agreed to receive your texts. For marketing messages, this typically requires express written consent, which can be collected through a web form, a text-in keyword, or a paper form. Transactional messages like order confirmations or appointment reminders require consent too, but the bar is slightly lower since the recipient has an existing relationship with your business.
Every campaign must include opt-out instructions. Replying STOP should immediately unsubscribe the recipient, and your system needs to honor that request automatically. Your initial message to any subscriber should identify your business and explain what kind of messages they’ll receive.
When you register a campaign with TCR, you’ll provide sample messages and describe your opt-in process. If your described use case doesn’t match what you actually send, carriers can flag and suspend the campaign. A campaign registered for appointment reminders that starts sending promotional offers is a compliance violation.
Costs of Registration
Registration fees vary by messaging provider, but the structure is consistent. There’s typically a one-time brand registration fee and a recurring monthly fee for each campaign you register. Some providers also charge for the secondary vetting that determines your Trust Score. These fees are generally modest for small operations with a single campaign, but businesses running multiple campaigns across different use cases will see costs add up. Check your specific messaging provider’s pricing, as they set their own fee schedules on top of the base TCR costs.
Getting Started
If you’re already using a business texting platform, your provider likely has a 10DLC registration workflow built into their dashboard. The process typically takes a few days to a few weeks depending on how quickly your brand and campaigns are verified. Have your EIN, legal business name, business address, and a clear description of your messaging use cases ready before you start. You’ll also need to document your opt-in process and prepare sample messages for each campaign you plan to register.
If you’re using a CRM, marketing automation tool, or scheduling platform that sends texts on your behalf, check whether that platform handles 10DLC registration for you or whether you need to coordinate with the underlying messaging provider directly. Many SaaS tools now walk customers through registration as part of their setup process.