Understand SMS charges and allowances

SMS usage is counted per recipient and per billable message segment. A one-segment operational message sent to 100 people uses 100 segments from the operational allowance.

A standard GSM-7 SMS contains up to 160 characters. Longer texts are normally joined on the recipient’s phone but are billed as multiple SMS, with up to 153 GSM-7 characters in each joined part.

Emoji, smart punctuation and other characters outside GSM-7 use Unicode encoding. A Unicode SMS can contain up to 70 characters, or up to 67 characters in each joined part, so it can use the allowance faster.

Before sending, review the estimated billable SMS, remaining allowance and estimated charge. Shorten the text or remove unnecessary special characters if the estimate is higher than expected.

Your country and plan set the monthly operational SMS allowance and per-segment overage price shown in Subscription and on the pricing page. The allowance includes booking notifications and feedback surveys after SMS is enabled. Promotional marketing campaigns are billed separately and do not consume it.

Subscription shows the current operational segment count and an estimated overage. Final accepted paid-period usage is billed after the billing period ends. Trial operational usage is settled separately when the trial ends; check Billing invoices for the actual charge.

Delivery destination, carrier rules and the final rendered message can affect usage. Use the in-product estimate as the practical check immediately before sending.

Schedmo queues allowance emails to eligible business owners at 75% and 100% usage. These are usage alerts, not a guarantee of immediate delivery; check current usage in Subscription.

Open Subscription → SMS controls. Enable SMS, review the monthly cap, and choose whether to Allow usage above the included allowance. Save the controls. If overage is off, operational SMS stops at the included allowance; an enabled overage option still respects the monthly cap.