A2P 10DLC

    Register once, and get it approved.

    US carriers block business texting that is not registered. This is the whole process in order, with the exact wording that passes review, the traps that get registrations rejected, and what to do when one comes back denied.

    Reviewed 24 August 2026Free to read35 steps
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    Blocked

    Unregistered traffic

    Texts sent to US numbers from an unregistered 10-digit number do not get delivered. They fail with error 30034. A campaign that is submitted but still pending counts as unregistered.

    2 to 4 weeks

    Realistic timeline

    Brand approval can land in minutes. Campaign review is the bottleneck, and providers were quoting anywhere from 5 to 15 business days when this was written. Register before you need to send.

    30896

    The most common rejection

    Opt-in error. Almost every rejection is about how you collect consent and what your website says, not about what your business does. That is good news: it is fixable wording.

    Your progress

    0 / 35

    First, which one are you?

    Phase 1

    Fix the paperwork and the website first

    0 / 10

    Almost every rejection is decided before you open the registration form. The reviewer checks your legal name against the IRS, opens your website, and looks for a specific set of sentences. Get these right and the rest is data entry.

    1. Match your legal name and EIN to the IRS letter exactly

      10 minutes

      Use the CP 575 or a 147C letter as the source of truth, not your W-9 or your logo.

    2. Check your EIN is old enough to be verifiable

      Check now, then wait if needed

      An EIN issued in the last 15 days will usually be rejected.

    3. Use a business-domain email and a real authorized representative

      10 minutes

      A Gmail address on a standard brand is a rejection. So is a contact who cannot sign for the company.

    4. Get a real mobile number and a public-domain email ready

      10 minutes

      Sole proprietor verification runs on an SMS one-time code, and the rules are the opposite of the standard path.

    5. Put the website live, secure, and reachable without a login

      Varies

      A reviewer has to be able to open your site and find the opt-in form as a member of the public.

    6. Add the mobile non-sharing clause to your privacy policy

      15 minutes

      The single highest-leverage sentence on your entire website.

    7. Publish messaging terms with opt-out, support and frequency

      15 minutes

      Your terms have to name the sender, say how to stop, and say how often you text.

    8. Rebuild the opt-in so consent is separate, unchecked, and optional

      30 minutes

      Four rules, and breaking any one of them is its own rejection code.

    9. Put privacy and terms links in the footer of every form

      20 minutes

      Per form, not per site. A funnel step with a phone field needs the links on that step.

    10. Confirm the list you plan to text actually opted in

      Varies

      Consent cannot be bought, sold, inherited from another brand, or assumed from a purchase.

    Phase 2

    Register the brand

    0 / 7

    The brand is who you are. It is verified once against tax and business records, and everything else hangs off it. This part is usually fast; when it is slow, it is because a name or a number did not match.

    1. Pick the brand type your EIN status actually allows

      5 minutes

      This is an eligibility gate, not a preference. Having an EIN disqualifies you from the sole proprietor path.

    2. Fill in the business profile before you open the registration form

      15 minutes

      In HighLevel this is a separate screen under business settings, and the A2P form inherits from it.

    3. Submit the brand

      20 minutes

      In HighLevel this lives in the sub-account Trust Center, under the A2P messaging card.

    4. Answer the one-time code within 24 hours

      5 minutes

      The OTP goes to the mobile number you registered, and it expires.

    5. Decide whether to pay for vetting

      5 minutes to decide

      Optional third-party scoring that raises your throughput ceiling. It can also lower your score.

    6. Appeal a low trust score rather than living with it

      15 minutes to file

      A score is static. It will not improve on its own, so a bad one is permanent until you challenge it.

    7. Confirm the brand reads Verified before going further

      Minutes to several days

      Verified is the minimum status that lets you register a campaign at all.

    Phase 3

    Register the campaign

    0 / 6

    The campaign is what you send and how people agreed to receive it. This is where registrations get rejected, and nearly always over the consent description rather than the business itself. Every field below has a template above.

    1. Pick the use case that matches what you really send

      10 minutes

      Registering the wrong one is an immediate rejection, and some categories are barred outright.

    2. Write the campaign description

      15 minutes

      Who sends, who receives, why, and how consent was obtained. Minimum 40 characters, and use all of them.

    3. Write sample messages that match the use case

      15 minutes

      One promotional, one transactional, real merge fields in brackets.

    4. Describe every single way someone can opt in

      20 minutes

      The field that decides most registrations. List all of the paths, not the main one.

    5. Write the opt-in confirmation and the HELP and STOP replies

      15 minutes

      All three are vetted content, and all three have required elements.

    6. Submit, then turn off your SMS steps

      5 minutes

      A pending campaign is treated as unregistered. Messages sent now fail and still cost you.

    Phase 4

    Connect the numbers and prove it works

    0 / 4

    Approval does not switch anything on by itself. This is the phase people skip, and then spend a week wondering why an approved campaign still will not deliver.

    1. Link every phone number to the approved campaign

      10 minutes

      Approval and association are two different things.

    2. Give the carriers up to three business days

      Up to 3 business days

      Your registration has to reach every carrier before filtering settles down.

    3. Send a real test to a real handset on each major carrier

      20 minutes

      A dashboard that says delivered is not the same as a phone that buzzed.

    4. Text STOP and HELP to your own number and read what comes back

      10 minutes

      Check the replies are the ones you registered, then rejoin so you have not opted yourself out.

    Phase 5

    Stay approved

    0 / 8

    Registration is a gate, not a finish line. Campaigns get suspended for how they behave afterwards, and the thresholds are enforced by machines watching your traffic.

    1. Keep consent records you could actually produce

      Ongoing

      Timestamp, source, and the exact disclosure wording in force at the time.

    2. Catch the opt-outs your platform does not catch

      Ongoing

      A reply of 'please stop texting me' is a valid revocation. Your platform will not action it.

    3. Send inside quiet hours, in the recipient's timezone

      Ongoing

      8am to 9pm local time for the person receiving it, not for you.

    4. Respect the ramp and the daily caps

      Ongoing

      Your platform, your trust score and T-Mobile each impose a separate ceiling.

    5. Watch the opt-out rate against the published thresholds

      Weekly

      HighLevel warns at 2% opt-outs and restricts sending at 3%. Those are real numbers you can manage against.

    6. Send links from a domain you own

      One-time setup

      Public shorteners are filtered on sight, and AT&T blocks them outright.

    7. Repeat the opt-out instructions at least every 30 days

      Ongoing

      Recurring programmes have to keep telling people how to leave.

    8. Re-register when what you send stops matching what you registered

      As needed

      The campaign describes your traffic. Change the traffic and the description is now false.

    Message cost

    What a message actually costs to send

    Carriers bill per segment, not per message. One character pasted out of a word processor can quietly triple that. Paste a draft and see what it really is.

    Encoding

    UCS-2

    Characters

    116

    Segments

    2

    Left in part

    18

    This sends as 2 segments, so every carrier fee and per-message charge on it is multiplied by 2.

    2 characters forced this to UCS-2

    The GSM-7 alphabet holds 160 characters per part. Anything outside it re-encodes the whole message and drops the budget to 70.

    • ’ curly apostrophe '
    • — em dash -
    Questions

    The ones we get asked every week

    The rest is free too, we just want to know who has it

    Unlock the compliance toolkit

    Thirteen copy-paste blocks carrying the exact wording reviewers match against, the searchable troubleshooter over thirty-three rejection and delivery codes, and the list of advice that used to be right and now gets registrations denied. One email, no drip you cannot leave.

    That box is unchecked, this form submits without it, and the disclosure sits next to it rather than buried in the terms. That is not a coincidence: it is the same standard the checklist above asks of you.

    Where this comes from

    Carrier rules, fees, and throughput limits change without much notice, and the numbers above were accurate on 24 August 2026. Confirm anything cost-related with your own provider before you quote it to a client. This is operational guidance from running these registrations, not legal advice; consent and record-keeping obligations under the TCPA are worth a lawyer's read if you are texting at volume.

    Or skip the queue entirely.

    A2P registration exists because SMS runs on carrier rails. iBluSend sends real iMessage from a real device instead, which is why it has no brand registration, no campaign vetting, and no per-message carrier fee. We built it while waiting on one of these approvals.

    See how iBluSend works
    Have us run the registration