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Using a sim card to deliver messages to your customers is NOT illegal but may be against your mobile providers fair use policy, especially if you are sending a particularly high volume of messages through your CRM.
Most countries have laws against unsolicited marketing via electronic methods such as email and SMS.
SMS Marketing refers to sending marketing messages to your customers through text messaging. SMS Marketing
can directly get product and sales information to your customers and draw them back for repeat purchases. However, you have to be careful that your marketing texts do not become spam and breach any of your legal obligations.
Always familiarize yourself with the laws and regulations about sending commercial SMS messages for the countries and regions where your customers are located.
SMS Marketing is text messaging of a commercial nature that you send to your customers. You may send these kinds of text messages to notify customers of a sale starting at your business or provide your repeat customers with exclusive discount codes and coupons.
In legal terms, any SMS of a commercial nature are called “commercial electronic messages”. These are electronic messages sent through a telecommunications service that either:
promote or market goods or services;
encourage or enable a dishonest financial advantage; or
contain a link to a page or message detailing the previous two points.
Electronic messages of a transactional or administrative nature will not qualify as commercial electronic messages for legal purposes.
These can include:
shipping/delivery updates;
receipts;
responses to a request for a quote or estimate;
confirmation messages of a previous transaction;
warranty or security information about previously purchased goods;
appointment reminders; or
notification of a completed delivery.
You can only legally engage in SMS marketing when it does not qualify as spam, such as unsolicited commercial electronic messages.
Your marketing texts are unsolicited when you do not:
Have the customer’s consent to send them that message;
clearly identify who you are and include your contact details; and
include a way for your customers to unsubscribe from future texts.
In each marketing text message you send to your customers, you need to identify your business as the sender and include your contact details.
You also need to include an easy way for them to unsubscribe from future text marketing, using the same communication method. You cannot direct your customers to an email address or landline to unsubscribe.
The short answer is no... We do not police the usage of the SMS Gateway and we do not know if contacts you are messaging have opted in or not. You are using your own mobile device and sim card and are free to utilise the service any way you want.
We are making you aware of the regulations and are not responsible if you do not follow them. Per our Terms & Conditions. which govern your access to and use of Inst8's SMS Gateway services.
Our SMS Gateway and Android application works in any country, as it's a decentralised solution that utilises a phone and sim card located in your country.
The phone and sim card need to be provided by you. You will want to dedicate this phone for this purpose and buy a sim card from a provider that offers unlimited text messaging in their plan.
Most providers have cheap pre-paid mobile plans with unlimited text messaging.
We currently have an integration with HighLevel and will develop additional CRM integrations in the future.
The HighLevel integration is in the HL Marketplace. Once you install and configure it you can add Inst8 SMS as your default SMS provider in your sub-account phone settings, which allows you to send & receive messages in the conversations tab and through automations and workflows.
You are allocated a number of mobile devices to your account, dependent on your subscription plan.
Each mobile device can be linked to a HL sub-account, allowing you to integrate multiple sub-accounts to your Inst8 SMS subscription. We are working on Release 2 which will allow you to connect multiple devices to one sub-account to improve bulk sending capability.
If you have multiple sub-accounts linked to your Gateway account they will share the monthly credit allocation on the account.
You can avoid your sim card getting blocked by ensuring that you use the Drip feature in HL to send your bulk outbound SMS campaigns in batches of 30-40 messages every 10 minutes and allowing a sufficient buffer between sending.
Release 2 will increased the capacity by enabling you to add additional devices to your HL sub-account, or another sim card to dual sim phones. This will allow the gateway to automatically split sending between devices and sim cards.
You can also use spintax in your outbound messages to randomise content.
Unfortunately we do not foresee that we will have an iOS application in the near future. Apple does not allow 3rd party applications from sending & receiving messages via the device.
As most customers dedicate the device for the purpose of sending and receiving text messages, Android devices are a more cost effective solution.
The long form mobile number attached to the sending sim card is what your customer will see.
You can receive calls on the mobile device but not within HL. This is why we recommend dedicating the device to text messages.
If someone tries to call the mobile number you will get a missed call text message in the conversation tab. We suggest that you redirect calls to your main business number, if the mobile provider allows this.
Alternatively you can set up a workflow/automation to engage with customers who try to call this number.
The SMS Gateway utilises SMS credits to send and receive SMS's through the server.
We have packages starting @ $47 for 10000 credits, which is the equivalent of 10000 text messages.
The cost per message works out to 0.005c.
You will also need to cover the cost of your mobile sim card which is typically between $20-$30 per month with unlimited messaging from your mobile service provider.
We need to charge a fee per message in order to cover the costs of running the SMS Gateway servers, API calls and provide ongoing development and support for the solution.
You can upgrade your subscription at any time and the system will replace the existing subscription and apply the new credit allocation to your account.
Subscriptions run from month to month and you can cancel your subscription at any time within the Gateway Dashboard.
