If you send business text messages to US mobile numbers from a standard ten-digit long code, carriers require you to register. This is 10DLC, and unregistered traffic is filtered aggressively. Here is what the process actually involves.

Why it exists

Ten-digit long codes were built for person-to-person texting. Businesses adopted them for application-to-person messaging because customers prefer replying to a normal-looking local number rather than a short code.

Carriers had no way to distinguish legitimate business traffic from spam sent the same way. 10DLC gives them one: businesses register who they are and what they intend to send, and carriers grant throughput accordingly.

The two things you register

Your brand. Legal business name, EIN, address, website and contact details. These are verified against public records, so they must match your registration exactly. A mismatch between the EIN and legal name is the single most common cause of rejection.

Your campaigns. Each use case is registered separately: appointment reminders, two-factor codes, marketing, account notifications. You submit sample messages, describe how consumers opt in, and confirm your opt-out handling.

Sample messages should be real. Placeholders like “Your appointment is at TIME” get rejected; write them as a customer would actually receive them, with brand name included.

Trust scores and throughput

After brand verification you receive a trust score, which determines your messages-per-minute throughput and daily limits to each carrier.

Score is driven by verification level, business age and vetting. Standard vetting is automatic. External vetting is an optional paid step that materially raises throughput for established businesses, and is worth it if you send at any volume.

Low scores are not permanent. If your registration is rejected or scored poorly, the fix is usually correcting business details rather than appealing.

What it costs

Expect three cost layers: a one-time brand registration fee, a monthly per-campaign fee that varies by use case, and per-message carrier fees on top of your provider’s rate. Marketing campaigns cost more monthly than notification campaigns.

Budget for the campaign fees specifically, because they recur per campaign per month. Consolidating five loosely-defined campaigns into two well-defined ones is a legitimate saving.

The rules that get people filtered

Registration is necessary but not sufficient. Content and consent still matter.

Consent must be explicit and documented. A phone number collected for order confirmations does not consent to marketing. Keep records of when and how each number opted in.

Every campaign needs working opt-out. STOP must work and must be honored immediately across your systems, not just the sending platform.

Certain content is restricted or prohibited outright, including cannabis, most lending offers, and anything sexually explicit, regardless of legality in a given state.

Do not use URL shorteners on shared domains. Shared shortener links are heavily filtered because spammers use them. Use a branded domain or your own subdomain.

Timeline

Brand verification is usually same-day to two days. Campaign approval typically runs three to seven days, longer for marketing use cases. External vetting adds a few days.

Plan for two weeks before your first send if you are starting from nothing. Providers who handle registration as part of onboarding absorb most of the back-and-forth, which is worth asking about before you pick one.