SMS Segments

How SMS & MMS Segments Affect Pricing

📡 The info on this page isn’t a RoboCent thing—it’s how carrier networks handle SMS and MMS at a system level, way above our pay grade! We’re just here to break it down so you know exactly how messages are segmented to provide transparent pricing.

How SMS Pricing Works

SMS messages are sent in segments, each with a character limit. If your message is short, it fits in one segment. If it’s longer, it’s broken into multiple segments, which increases the cost.

What Counts as a Special Character or Emoji?

Most regular letters, numbers, and punctuation use standard SMS encoding (GSM-7), which allows 160 characters per segment.

However, if your message includes special characters such as:

✅ Emojis (😊, 🎉, ✅) ✅ Smart quotes (“ ”) instead of standard quotes (" ") ✅ Long dashes (—) instead of hyphens (-) ✅ Certain accented letters (é, ñ, ü) ✅ Symbols like ®, €, or Chinese/Japanese characters

Your message switches to Unicode encoding, which lowers the segment limit to 70 characters instead of 160. This means your message may require more segments, increasing the cost.

Example Pricing Impact:

• A 200-character standard text → 2 segments

• A 200-character text with an emoji → 3 segments

Since pricing is based on segments, longer messages and special characters increase costs.

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How MMS Pricing Works

MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) allows you to send images, GIFs, videos, and longer text messages. Instead of segment-based pricing, MMS messages are billed as a single message, up to 1,500 characters—but they cost more than a single SMS.

When to Use MMS vs. SMS?

• Use SMS for short, text-only messages

• Use MMS when you need to include an image, GIF, video, or a long message (500+ characters)

No Guesswork – We Do It for You!

When you create a new script in RoboCent, we automatically calculate the number and type of characters for SMS and MMS so you’ll always know exactly what you’re paying before sending.