# Sending SMS messages

Flow Retail supports sending SMS messages to any recipients, both to registered customers and to mobile numbers not registered to a customer.

SMS is also used for various notifications to customers.

## Getting started

To start using SMS messages, you need to have the SMS extension enabled.

There is no monthly cost to the SMS extension, however there is a price per SMS being sent, as described on the bottom of this guide.

## Sending messages

### Send messages from basically 'anywhere'

The messages can be sent from numerous places, from the customer details page to the customer overview, to various specific functions where notifying the customer by SMS is relevant, like when informing the customer that a product they have requested has arrived and is ready to be picked up.

### Perfectly coupled with Click & Collect

The SMS service also sends pickup notifications on Click & Collect orders, if the Order Handling extension is being used.

## Pricing

The standard price per SMS message as of January 1st 2025 is **NOK 0,69** (**€ 0.069**).

Note that all prices are excluding any VAT.

SMS usage is billed monthly in arrears.

### Handling SMS messages with more than 160 characters

The world wide SMS protocol used to send SMS messages have a limit of 160 characters, however it is not a problem to send longer messages than 160 characters, and such messages are simply split up in several SMS messages according to the table at the bottom of this page.

Flow Retail automatically handles splitting a longer message into multiple SMS-messages, so that the customer only receives one message.

{% hint style="info" %}
To split an SMS message into multiple parts, 7 characters out of the 160-character limit are used to include a User Data Header (UDH). This header contains metadata that allows the receiving phone to reassemble the message correctly. As a result, each part of a multi-part SMS can contain 153 characters instead of 160. This applies to every segment of the message, not just the first.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="warning" %}
In general we do recommend to try keeping the messages below the 160 characters "soft-limit", however it is more important that the customer receives an informative message of lets say 210 characters than trying to limit it to it becomes diffuse and unclear.
{% endhint %}

| Characters           | Number of SMS messages required |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| 1 - 160 characters   | 1 SMS message                   |
| 161 - 306 characters | 2 SMS messages                  |
| 307 - 459 characters | 3 SMS messages                  |
| 460 - 612 characters | 4 SMS messages                  |
| 613 - 765 characters | 5 SMS message                   |
| 766 - 918 characters | 6 SMS message (max)             |


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