Get built-for-business messaging using your existing toll-free numbers
Leverage your existing toll-free numbers to create a better customer experience with the power of Bandwidth Toll-Free SMS.
Get more with toll-free SMS that's scalable and gives your business the high-volume, business-grade texting it needs.
Leverage your existing toll-free numbers to create a better customer experience with the power of Bandwidth Toll-Free SMS.
Increasingly, your customers want to communicate with your business over text. But sometimes that’s not enough. With toll-free texting you can easily escalate from text to voice using the same number.
Toll-free SMS enables you to send high-volume, high-throughput text messages to millions of customers using one recognizable number, creating a better customer experience.
Don’t get a new number, use the one you already have! Text-enable your existing toll-free number and eliminate confusion for your customers or having to manage a separate number for messaging.
It can take weeks to get a short code and start sending messages. With toll-free SMS you can be sending messages in days, connecting with your customers faster than ever.
Supercharge your messaging with Bandwidth Toll-Free SMS. Powered by our nationwide Feature Group D network, and backed by our industry-leading support.
Your customers want to connect with you over SMS, and here's just a few of the
innovative ways businesses are using toll-free SMS to do just that.Send your customers timely appointment reminders and alerts from a familiar number they can call or text back.
Get real-time feedback from your customers. Find out how your team did and follow-up on any outstanding problems.
Send promotions and ads to the right customer at the right time, delivered right to your customers' mobile phone from a number they recognize.
Create super agents. Handle multiple conversations at once and easily escalate to a voice call from the same number if needed.
Toll-free SMS enables you to use your existing numbers to create a better, more customer-centric texting experience.
How software companies like Yosi Health are helping the healthcare industry (and patients) with SMS
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Read More →SMS: The “non-app” application behind the best omni-channel customer experiences
Watch the webinar
Read therequire ‘bandwidth’
include Bandwidth
include Bandwidth::Messaging
bandwidth_client = Bandwidth::Client.new(
messaging_basic_auth_user_name: ‘username’,
messaging_basic_auth_password: ‘password’
)
messaging_client = bandwidth_client.messaging_client.client
account_id = ‘1’
body = MessageRequest.new
body.application_id = ‘1-2-3’
body.to = [‘+17777777777’]
body.from = ‘+18888888888’
body.text = ‘Hello from Bandwidth’
body.media = [“https://s3.amazonaws.com/bw-v2-api/demo.jpg”]
messaging_client.create_message(account_id, :body => body)
Sending messages with our Toll-Free SMS API is easy.
Check out our developer docs to learn more.
Most text messaging platforms rent network space from carriers. Bandwidth is different. We have our own redundant, nationwide, Feature Group D network to power our toll-free. It enables us to give you deeper insights, reliable delivery, and direct-to-carrier pricing.
We take a unique approach to support—we focus on making sure our customers are successful. We have a dedicated support team made up of industry vets with the knowledge and experience to tackle the most demanding telecom situations, and tools and processes to ensure customer success and satisfaction. You’ll wonder why everyone doesn’t have the same approach.
Give your customers, and your team, an experience they won’t forget with Bandwidth Toll-Free SMS. Talk to a toll-free SMS expert today and see how your business can make better, more meaningful connections with your customers.
Talk to an ExpertMany businesses utilize toll-free SMS in order to send and receive high volume SMS messages to their customers, without all the extra carrier surcharges, with information like:
Toll-free SMS works best when your use case involves personalized messaging; meaning both the sender and the recipient are having a conversation via text message. Since consumers prefer to communicate through text messaging instead of taking the time to make a call, (especially if they think they’ll have to sit on hold or hunt through menus), text messaging helps businesses pave the way for a better customer/user experience. By maintaining a more personalized relationship with customers and providing a chance for them to respond back with any questions or concerns, Toll-free SMS is a scalable “easy button” for businesses to leverage text messaging today, on a number they probably already pay for.
Toll-free numbers vary in price depending on country location and service providers. In the United States, toll-free numbers are very reasonable, and start at around $1 to a few dollars per number.
Toll-free SMS is priced per message sent and/or received. At Bandwidth, toll-free SMS message pricing starts at $.0065 per message for both inbound and outbound messaging. Customers are billed monthly for messages sent and received by the business, and a small fee for the toll-free number itself.
Businesses looking to get started sending toll-free SMS can get started in a variety of ways depending on what technology tools you may need along the way. Bandwidth’s API-driven platform lets you get started developing applications or software platforms with toll-free messaging in just minutes. Businesses may also enable any existing toll-free numbers they have for texting with Bandwidth and use them to send critical alerts and notifications to their customers via SMS. This allows for a more personalized touch, since they are utilizing the same number their customers already know to call.
Toll-free verification will be required as of September 30, 2022, and can take up to 3-5 days.
Yes! If you already have a toll-free number that you are using for your contact center or sales line, it’s easy to enable your number for texting using Bandwidth’s Hosted Messaging feature so you won’t have to ride out an existing voice contract.
Toll-free SMS is still somewhat new for businesses, and it’s a great feature for businesses looking to communicate with their customers. Just like toll-free numbers are the expected business phone number for voice, toll-free is quickly becoming the expected and preferred business phone number for messaging. Studies show that the average consumer prefers to be communicated with via text, so toll-free messaging is becoming an increasingly important customer success and sales tool.
If your SMS feature is for customer support or sales, toll-free is a fantastic option for you because it allows customers to call your business back on the same phone number you are texting from. However, because toll-free numbers can support a higher throughput of messages per phone number than traditional ten-digit numbers, some developers choose to use toll-free numbers for one-way communications like alerts and notifications. Choosing toll-free also makes responding to those notifications possible.
The messaging revolution also plays a vital role in why toll-free is becoming a preferred style of messaging for businesses. Shared short codes were popular for a time, but are being eliminated due to spam concerns, so now only dedicated short codes are accepted in the industry. If you’re moving away from short codes, Toll-free SMS is the smartest way forward.
Short codes are great for mass messaging use cases like pin codes, two-factor authentication, SMS marketing, and more. If you’ve ever cast a vote for American Idol or donated via text to the Red Cross then you’ve used a short code. But some short code messages may be better sent using a toll-free number. Why?
Here are a few reasons:
Looking ahead, toll-free SMS is an ideal alternative for mass business text messaging when you include cost savings, ease of use, ease of implementation, and a better customer experience.
Toll-free verification will be required as of September 30, 2022, and can take up to 3-5 days.