10DLC pricing tiers, explained

So far we have covered the steps needed to register a Brand and a Campaign in order to send messages on the sanctioned 10DLC route.

One big question you may still have is—what is it going to cost me? To answer that, we’ll walk you through the steps you need to take to send a message and the cost associated with each step. First, we’ll look with at the process if you are registering 10DLC traffic as your own Campaign Service Provide, and then we’ll look at the process if you are registering with Bandwidth. 

Registering as a Campaign Service Provider

Step 1. Contract with The Campaign Registry as a Campaign Service Provider. There’s a one-time registration fee of $200

Step 2. Register a Brand. In this case it is a standard Brand “Emily’s Coffee Shop” and there’s a one-time $4 fee. 

Step 3. Register a Campaign to go along with this Brand. Here is where we run into some options. You can register this as a standard Campaign with a $10 monthly charge or you can register it as a low volume Campaign with a $1.50 monthly charge. We covered the difference between these two in our last post. There is a new option for campaigns as well as a special rate for a few of the special use cases (we’ll cover those either in a different post).

Step 4. Associate a Campaign ID to a telephone number. You can do this either via the Bandwidth API or the Bandwidth UI.

Step 5. Sending messages is the final step in determining the overall cost. With every message to a carrier, there will be the cost of both the message and the surcharge. The surcharge will vary depending on the carrier the receiving phone number is with. Verizon is currently charging a .0025 per segment surcharge, T-Mobile is charging .003 per segment both inbound and outbound, and AT&T has a variable surcharge between .002 and .004 depending on the class that is assigned to a campaign. If the message is an MMS message then the same principle of cost of message + surcharge applies, but the surcharges are different. 

Registering 10DLC traffic with Bandwidth

Now if you are registering your Brands and Campaigns with Bandwidth, you will not have the $200 fee from The Campaign Registry and you will need to talk to your Account Manager to determine the exact cost of registering a Brand and a Campaign. After that Steps 4 and 5 are the same. The Campaign Activation fee from T-Mobile will still apply as well as the per-message rate and carrier surcharge rate. 

One thing to call out is that no matter who you register your Brands and Campaigns with, you will receive the Campaign Activation Fee and Per Carrier Surcharge fees from your messaging provider rather than from The Campaign Registry as these are carrier pass-through fees.