Text messaging is prepaid. Your church holds a balance, messages draw it down as they are sent and as they arrive, and either auto-recharge or a manual top-up keeps it funded.
What it costs
Outgoing message - $0.0125 per 160 characters, per recipient.
Incoming message - $0.0125 per 160 characters of what the person sent. Replies, keywords and STOP requests all count.
Message containing an emoji or special character - $0.025, double the standard rate. This applies in both directions.
Activation - $5.00, charged once when text messaging is enabled.
Non-usage fee - $5.00 for each month in which your church neither sends nor receives a single message.
Tip: If your church uses the One Church payment gateway, text giving messages do not draw down the messaging balance.
How a message is billed
Billing counts every 160 characters of the message, then applies the standard or the doubled rate depending on whether the message contains an emoji or a special character. Emoji do not increase the character count — they double the price.
Some worked examples, all to 250 opted-in people:
A 140-character reminder is one charged unit each: 250 × $0.0125 = $3.13.
The same message with one emoji added is still one charged unit each, at the higher rate: 250 × $0.025 = $6.25.
A 400-character message is three charged units each: 250 × 3 × $0.0125 = $9.38, or $18.75 with an emoji in it.
Incoming messages follow the same rule against what the person sent, so a member replying with an emoji costs your church double. Each message is priced on its own characters, not on whatever you sent them.
Why emoji also make a message shorter
Long messages are split into segments before they travel, and the number of characters that fit in a segment depends on what the message contains. A plain message fits 160 characters. As soon as it includes an emoji or certain special characters, the whole message switches encoding and a segment holds only 70.
Messages are capped at six segments, so a message with an emoji runs out of room roughly four times faster — about 400 characters instead of about 900. The composer counts down against that cap as you type, and shows the per-number rate and an estimated total for the send.
Tip: Smart quotes, curly apostrophes and long dashes pasted from a word processor trip the same switch, with no emoji present. If a message is suddenly too long or twice the price, check whether it was pasted in.
Note that the character limit in the composer and the billing count are two different numbers. The composer counts how the carrier will split the message; billing always counts per 160 characters. For a plain message the two line up, and for a message with an emoji they do not.
Keeping the balance funded
You will need the Full Account permission to change the balance, auto-recharge and low-balance settings.
The Text Messaging panel shows your Balance, Auto Recharge?, Low Balance and Recharge To settings. Auto-recharge takes two values: the balance at which to recharge, and the amount to recharge to. The card on file is charged automatically.
You can also add a specific amount from the same panel, charged immediately to the card on file. If the card declines, the top-up fails and the balance is unchanged.
With auto-recharge off and the balance exhausted, sends are refused outright with a message asking you to replenish first.
The non-usage fee
A church that goes a full month without sending or receiving a single message is charged $5.00. Your toll-free number is held exclusively for your church whether or not you use it, and that fee covers holding it. Any month you send or receive even one message, it does not apply.
Auditing what you spent
Go to Messaging Center > Logs > Text Message and click View Billing Audit for a full breakdown of what was charged and when. The listing itself also carries a Cost column per message, and you can open any message to see per-recipient outcomes.