SMS sending cost and encoding

In order to send SMS, you'd first need some Pre-paid credits. Sending an SMS has a different cost, depending on the selected SMS encoding. But what is "encoding", you Loopify support person? Well, encoding is basically the type of characters/letters allowed in an SMS. There are two different SMS encodings:

• GSM7 encoding
• UCS-2 encoding

GSM7 is the default, simpler one that contains regular, most commonly used letters and symbols of many languages.
UCS-2 is the more advanced encoding that contains all kinds of special characters, including simpler and complex emojis.  

Understandably, the wide support of the UCS-2 encoding has a different cost, so let's see some examples. 

Sending with GSM7 encoding

As you probably know, SMS charging is based on the message length. The length affects the sending cost. In the GSM7 encoding. one SMS can contain up to 160 characters and it's charged as such. But, the math is different when it comes to longer messages. A long message is one that has more than 160 characters and it then consists of several part-messages. In longer messages, one part-message consists of up to 152 characters and it's charged as a single SMS. Line breaks take only one character. If you add space before a line break, the space will take a character as well.

Example: A GSM7 SMS of 161 characters consists of two part-messages (152+9), so you'll be charged for two SMS. An SMS of 304 characters also consists of two parts (152+152), but an SMS of 305 characters consists of three (152+152+1).

Here's more quick math:

 Here are some extra letters and characters that are supported in the GSM7 format:

Sending with UCS-2 encoding

Slightly different here. Due to the complexity, one UCS-2 SMS can contain up to 70 characters and it's charged as such. But again, different math when it comes to longer messages. A long message here is one that has more than 70 characters and it then consists of several part-messages. In longer messages, one part-message consists of up to 66 characters and it's charged as a single SMS. Line breaks take only one character. If you add space before a line break, the space will take a character as well.

Example: A UCS-2 SMS of 75 characters consists of two part-messages (70+5), so you'll be charged for two SMS. An SMS of 132 characters also consists of two parts (66+66), but an SMS of 133 characters consists of three (66+66+1).

SMS math for guidance: