SMS Costs | Crazytel Help Center

CrazyTel offers competitive SMS messaging services for business and residential customers. This article outlines our SMS pricing structure and character limitations to help you better understand our SMS service offerings.

SMS Pricing Structure

Standard SMS Rate

Cost per SMS: 5 cents (AUD) per SMS message

Consistent Pricing: This flat rate applies regardless of which VoIP or SIP Trunk plan you are subscribed to

Billing: SMS charges appear as separate line items on your monthly invoice or are deducted from your prepaid balance

Important Note for Mobile Plan Customers

The 5 cent SMS rate does NOT apply to CrazyTel SIM Card Mobile plans. Mobile plan customers should refer to their specific mobile plan documentation for applicable SMS rates and inclusions.

SMS Character Limits

Standard SMS Character Allocation

Standard GSM Alphabet: 160 characters per SMS

Unicode/Special Characters: 70 characters per SMS (includes emojis, non-English characters, and special symbols)

Multi-part SMS Messages

If your message exceeds the character limit, it will be automatically split into multiple SMS messages:

Messages using the standard GSM alphabet will be split at 153 characters per segment

Messages using Unicode will be split at 67 characters per segment

This reduction in characters per segment allows for the technical information needed to reassemble the message on the recipient's device.

Traps and gotchas

GSM 7 Bit Character table:

ETSI GSM Alphabet Standard v18, page 20, covers the "Standard" characters supported in SMS messages. For an easier-to-read version, Crazytel recommends the Wikipedia article on GSM 03.38, (specifically the Basic Character Set table, pictured below).

Tools to help calculate pricing

Crazytel strongly recommends the following tool by TeletopiaSMS: SMS Char Counter. Simply type your SMS message as you intend to send it, and this tool will calculate the part count (and encoding) used to send the SMS message. To calculate the cost to send your SMS, multiply the number of parts by 5c.