A2P 10DLC is the registration system US carriers require for any business that texts customers through software from a standard 10-digit local number: you register your company as a brand and each type of message as a campaign with The Campaign Registry, pay the fees, and pass a manual review. Registration gets your texts delivered. It does not make a cold text legal, and it was designed to keep unsolicited texting off those numbers.
Sales teams hit both questions at once. The rep who calls and gets voicemail wants to send a quick text from the same number. The ops person discovers that texts are being filtered because nobody registered a campaign. This guide covers the registration process, the published costs and delays, and the federal rules that apply to every sales text, so you can set up texting that is delivered and defensible.
What is A2P 10DLC, exactly?
A2P means application-to-person: a message sent by a business through software, as opposed to person-to-person (P2P) texting between two phones. 10DLC means 10-digit long code, the ordinary local US number your reps call from.
Until the early 2020s, businesses texted from long codes with little oversight, and spam followed. The major carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) responded by requiring every business that sends A2P traffic over 10-digit numbers to identify itself and declare its use cases through a central database, The Campaign Registry (TCR). Your messaging provider submits the registration for you; carriers then score your brand, set your throughput, and filter what does not match.
Three practical consequences:
- Unregistered traffic does not get through. Twilio’s documentation states that it began gradually blocking unregistered 10DLC messages in July 2023 and fully blocked them after August 31, 2023, still charging for the blocked messages.
- Your declared use case binds you. A campaign registered as “customer care” that starts sending promotions risks suspension.
- Throughput depends on trust. On Twilio, a Low-Volume Standard brand is capped at 2,000 SMS segments a day to T-Mobile, and a Standard brand ranges from 2,000 to unlimited depending on its Trust Score.
Toll-free numbers follow a separate process, toll-free verification. Short codes have their own application. For a sales team that wants the prospect to see the same local number that just called, 10DLC is the relevant route.
How does 10DLC registration work?
Registration happens in your messaging provider’s console, which submits it to TCR. The steps are the same everywhere.
1. Register the brand
The brand is your legal entity. You provide the legal company name, country of registration, tax ID (the EIN for US companies), address, website, and a contact. TCR verifies the identity, and the carriers assign a trust level.
Twilio distinguishes three brand types, as listed on November 5, 2026:
| Brand type | Who it is for | Campaigns | Daily volume to T-Mobile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sole proprietor | No tax ID, very low volume | 1 | Up to 1,000 segments |
| Low-Volume Standard | Registered business, small volume | Up to 5 | Up to 2,000 segments |
| Standard | Registered business, higher volume | Up to 5 | 2,000 to unlimited, by Trust Score |
A sales team in a registered company will usually register a Low-Volume Standard or Standard brand. A Standard brand goes through an extra vetting step.
2. Register the campaign
The campaign describes one use case. Reviewers check that what you declare is coherent and that it matches the messages you send. Expect to provide:
- the use case (marketing, customer care, mixed, and so on);
- a description of who receives the messages and why;
- the opt-in flow: how, where, and with what wording recipients agreed to receive texts, often with a screenshot or the URL of the form;
- sample messages, which must name your company and, for marketing, include opt-out language;
- your opt-out and help handling: replies such as STOP and HELP, and the confirmation sent back;
- often a link to a privacy policy stating that mobile numbers and consent are not shared with third parties.
This is where cold texting fails. A campaign that says “we text prospects from a purchased list who never heard of us” describes a flow with no opt-in, which the carrier guidelines exclude. Describing it otherwise to get approved puts you in breach of what you registered.
3. Attach numbers and send
Once the campaign is approved, you link your 10-digit numbers to it. Messages from those numbers are then treated as registered traffic, within the throughput the carriers allotted.
What does 10DLC cost?
Fees come in three layers: Campaign Registry fees, carrier fees, and your provider’s own messaging rates. Twilio publishes the first layer in its documentation; as listed on November 5, 2026:
| Fee | Amount | When |
|---|---|---|
| Brand registration | $4.50 | One-time, per brand |
| Standard brand vetting | $41.50 | One-time, Standard brands |
| Brand vetting appeal | $11 | Per appeal, if a Standard vetting is rejected |
| Campaign vetting | $15 | One-time, per campaign submitted |
| Monthly campaign fee | $1.50 to $10 | Per campaign, per month, depending on use case |
| Sole proprietor campaign | $2 | Per month |
On top of that, carriers charge per-message fees on registered A2P traffic, which your provider passes through, and your provider charges its own per-segment rate. Other providers pass through comparable Campaign Registry fees, sometimes bundled or marked up. Read your provider’s pricing page rather than assuming Twilio’s numbers.
The direct fees are modest. The real cost is time: a rejected campaign costs another vetting fee and another wait.
How long does approval take?
No provider guarantees a delay. Brand registration is usually fast. Campaigns are reviewed manually, and Twilio attributes slower registrations to that human review. Budget days to a few weeks, and register before you need to send, not on launch day.
The common reasons for rejection are predictable:
- an opt-in description that is vague or missing;
- sample messages that do not name the brand or lack opt-out language;
- a website that does not match the brand, or no privacy policy;
- a use case that does not match the samples (promotional content in a “customer care” campaign).
Cold texting: what the federal rules say
Registration is about carriers. Legality is about the law, and the law treats a text as a call.
Texts are calls under the TCPA
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act regulates calls, and the Supreme Court confirmed in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez (2016) that a text message to a cell phone qualifies as a call. Two TCPA regimes matter for sales texting.
Autodialed texts. Texts sent with an automatic telephone dialing system to a cell phone require prior express consent, and prior express written consent when they are marketing. Facebook v. Duguid (2021) narrowed what counts as an autodialer, which is why many one-to-one texts typed by a rep fall outside this rule. Do not build a compliance program on that line: automated sends, triggered texts, and bulk tools are where lawsuits land.
Do Not Call. The FCC codified in its December 2023 order that National Do Not Call Registry protections apply to text messages. A telemarketing text to a registered number needs consent or an established business relationship, whatever technology sent it. The FCC’s rules also require honoring company-specific do-not-call requests.
Quiet hours
Federal rules bar telephone solicitations before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in the recipient’s local time, and texts are telephone solicitations when they sell. Several states go further; Florida, for instance, limits commercial solicitation calls to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time and extended its telemarketing law to text messages in 2021. Use the recipient’s area code or address to determine the time zone, not yours.
Opt-out
Every marketing text should say who is texting and how to stop. Recipients use STOP and its synonyms, and the FCC’s revised revocation rules require honoring a set of standard keywords. Our guide to the TCPA changes taking effect November 25, 2026 covers the keyword list, exclusive opt-out methods, and the ten-business-day deadline in detail; this article does not repeat them.
What about B2B?
The Telemarketing Sales Rule exempts most business-to-business calls, and the Do Not Call Registry is meant for residential and personal numbers. But the mobile number on a prospect’s LinkedIn profile is usually a personal cell phone, and the TCPA’s consent rules for texts to cell phones do not have a B2B exception. Our guide on calling cell phones in B2B explains why the line between business and personal numbers is thinner than sales teams assume.
How to text prospects without cold texting
Put the two halves together and a workable model emerges: texting follows a human interaction instead of starting one.
- Call first. A live call by a rep to a business line is the baseline covered in our guide on whether cold calling is legal.
- Ask during the call. “Can I text you the link?” is a consent you can log in the CRM, with the date.
- After a missed call, keep it short and identified. First name, company, why you called, and an opt-out line. One text per attempt, not a sequence of five.
- Respect the window in the recipient’s time zone.
- Process every STOP for the whole team, the same day.
- Register the campaign honestly: describe the opt-in as “recipients agree on a call or request information,” and use samples that look like what reps actually send.
Templates for each of these situations are in our SMS after call templates.
Where Skipcall fits
Skipcall is an outbound calling platform. Its SMS messaging sends and receives texts from the same number that called the prospect, in an inbox shared by the team and attached to the contact record. Replies, including a STOP, land in that conversation, so an opt-out can be recorded once for the whole team, for example with a tag on the contact. Skipcall provides US numbers, and a US virtual phone number is a common setup for European teams calling the US.
Sequences can also send a text automatically when a call reaches voicemail, with the SMS if answering machine setting. That is an automated text: reserve it for contacts with consent on file or clear business numbers, and put your company name and opt-out line in the template.
Before you text US mobile numbers at volume, ask our team through the chat how texts from your US numbers are registered with carriers. Skipcall does not decide who you text: the consent and content stay your responsibility. Plans with SMS start at $25 per user per month on Business VoIP, and the voicemail-triggered text is part of the AI automations included from Starter, with no long-term commitment. Details are on the pricing page.
What to remember
A2P 10DLC is the carriers’ gate: register a brand and a campaign with The Campaign Registry through your provider, pay a few dollars in one-time and monthly fees, and wait for a manual review that can take days or weeks. Unregistered traffic has been blocked since 2023.
Registration is not permission. Under the TCPA a text is a call, Do Not Call protections cover texts, quiet hours apply in the recipient’s time zone, and every opt-out must be honored. Cold texting a purchased list fails both tests: it cannot be described honestly in a campaign, and it carries per-text liability. Texting after a call, with a short identified message and a working STOP, passes both.
Sources consulted November 5, 2026: Twilio documentation on A2P 10DLC brand registration and fees; Twilio A2P 10DLC registration overview; FCC Report and Order FCC 23-107 (December 2023) and Federal Register notice of January 26, 2024; 47 CFR 64.1200; Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153 (2016); Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021); Florida Statutes § 501.616 and § 501.059.
