Three kinds of US sender
Application traffic to US numbers travels from one of three sender types. 10-digit long codes (10DLC) are ordinary local numbers approved for application traffic once a brand and a campaign are registered. Toll-free numbers need a one-time verification of the business and the use case. Short codes are five- or six-digit numbers leased for high volume after a carrier review that takes weeks. Unregistered or unverified traffic is blocked or heavily filtered by the carriers.
What 10DLC registration asks
Registration runs through The Campaign Registry. A brand is a legal entity identified by its tax number (an EIN for US companies); a campaign describes one use case with sample messages and opt-in details. Carriers assign throughput from the brand's vetting score and charge pass-through fees per message on top of the provider's price, which is why US quotes list a base price plus a carrier fee. A sole-proprietor path exists but requires a US or Canadian address and phone number.
No alphanumeric senders
US and Canadian carriers do not deliver alphanumeric sender names. Whatever you type as the sender, recipients see a number. The brand therefore belongs in the first words of the text: ACME: your code is 493 201.
If you have no US entity
You cannot register your own 10DLC brand without a legal entity and tax identifier, and a no-KYC provider cannot do it for you, because the programme exists precisely to attach an identity to a sender. What you can do is send through a gateway's own numeric senders. On SMSMeteor, messages to the United States leave from numeric senders assigned automatically at $0.0084 per segment, with no carrier surcharge line. That suits codes, alerts, receipts and reminders to your users. It is not a vehicle for high-volume US marketing under your own brand; for that, a registered US programme with a provider that verifies you is the right tool, and our comparison pages say so.
Content that survives US filters
- No public link shorteners; use a short path on your own domain.
- No links at all in one-time codes.
- Identify the sender in the first words, and keep to one segment.
- Avoid the carriers' restricted categories: loans, gambling, cannabis, firearms, and anything that looks like phishing.
The TCPA applies to you too
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act covers messages to US numbers wherever the sender is based: prior express written consent for marketing, honoured opt-outs, sending between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the recipient's time zone, and statutory damages of 500 to 1,500 dollars per message for violations. Default quiet hours for the United States match that window, and transactional messages are exempt from it. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
Something unclear or out of date? Write to [email protected]; corrections are folded back into the guide and the update date changes.