10DLC rules and requirements: what carriers actually check

Carriers check that your brand is a real business whose details match public records, that your campaign's use case matches the messages you send, and that recipients opted in and can opt out with STOP and get help with HELP. Once you're approved, your trust score sets your sending limits, and your content has to stay inside the 10DLC rules you registered under.

Approval is the first step, not the last. A campaign that passes review can still be filtered, throttled or suspended if what goes out doesn't match what was registered. This post walks through each requirement in the order a reviewer reads it, what a rejection usually means, and what you have to keep doing after approval. If you need the background on what 10DLC is and why it exists, start with our 10DLC explainer.

The two things you register: a brand and a campaign

A 10DLC registration has two layers, and both get reviewed.

• The brand is the legal business doing the sending. It's checked once, and it gets a trust score.
• The campaign describes one kind of messaging that brand does: what it sends, to whom, and how those people agreed to receive it. A brand can have several campaigns. Each phone number you send from is attached to a campaign.

On Ready, both are filed in the app. There's no setup fee. At submit you pay the first month, $25. After that the monthly cost is $25 for registration, and $2 per number. With one brand, one campaign and two numbers, you pay $25/mo for registration and $2/mo per number for 2 numbers, $29 a month in total. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

Brand requirements: where most "simple" rejections come from

The brand check is mostly a matching exercise. A reviewer compares what you typed against tax and business records, and small mismatches cause a large share of rejections.

What you need to have right:

1. Legal business name, exactly as registered with the IRS. "Acme Plumbing LLC" and "Acme Plumbing" are different strings. If your EIN letter says "LLC", your form says "LLC".
2. EIN that belongs to that legal name. A DBA name goes in a separate field, not in place of the legal name.
3. Business address that matches your registration records. Avoid a virtual mailbox if your filings list a different street address.
4. Entity type and vertical: private company, public company, nonprofit and so on, plus the industry you operate in.
5. A live website on a domain that clearly belongs to the business, with a privacy policy. A parked domain or a "coming soon" page gets rejected.
6. A contact email on that domain where possible. A free webmail address next to a corporate website looks inconsistent to a reviewer.

Ready registers businesses with an EIN. If you don't have one, get one from the IRS before you submit.

Brand vetting and trust score

Every brand gets a trust score. Optional external vetting, $79 Standard or $179 Enhanced (one-time), can raise it. That matters for daily caps, covered below. Most senders don't need vetting. The standard $25/mo for registration covers them.

Campaign requirements: use case, description and sample messages

This is the part reviewers read closely, and the part people rush.

Pick the use case that matches what you send

Use cases include marketing, customer care, account notifications, delivery notifications, two-factor authentication, mixed, and a few others. The rule is simple: register for what you actually send. If you register "marketing" but mostly send appointment reminders, or register "account notifications" and then send promos, you have a mismatch. That causes filtering after approval and can get the campaign suspended. We cover the choice in detail in matching use case to what you actually send.

If you send both reminders and promotions, "mixed" is the honest option. The cost is that mixed campaigns often get less throughput than a single, well-defined use case.

Write a campaign description a stranger could follow

The description should answer three questions in plain sentences: who is texting, who receives the texts, and why. For example: "Acme Plumbing sends appointment confirmations, technician arrival notices and occasional seasonal service offers to customers who opted in on our booking form at acmeplumbing.com/book."

Vague descriptions get rejected. "We send updates to customers" is the classic example.

Sample messages that look like your real sends

Carriers usually want at least two sample messages. Each one should:

• Name your brand ("Acme Plumbing: your tech arrives between 9 AM and 11 AM")
• Match the use case you selected
• Include opt-out language in at least one sample ("Reply STOP to opt out")
• Use realistic placeholders like [first name] or [date], not lorem ipsum
• Avoid public URL shorteners. A branded link on your own domain reads as more trustworthy.

If a reviewer flags your samples for restricted content, the fix is usually a rewrite, not an appeal. See the sample-message rewrite that passes.

Opt-in proof: the requirement that sinks the most campaigns

Reviewers want to see how a person agrees to receive your texts, and that the agreement was specific to SMS. For a web form, that usually means:

• A screenshot or URL of the form where the phone number is collected
• Disclosure next to the checkbox or submit button that names the brand, describes the type of messages, states message frequency, says "Msg & data rates may apply", explains STOP and HELP, and links to your terms and privacy policy
• A privacy policy line saying mobile numbers and consent aren't shared with third parties for marketing
• No pre-checked boxes, and no SMS consent buried inside general terms you have to accept to buy something

If your opt-in happens by keyword ("Text JOIN to..."), by phone, or on paper, describe that flow in the same detail. Wording that clears review on the first submission is in the exact opt-in language that passes.

Registration proves your process, not each contact

Registration shows carriers that your opt-in process exists. It doesn't prove that a specific person opted in. You still need your own per-contact records: the time, the wording they saw, and the page they were on.

Ready records the sender's opt-in attestation on each campaign you send and each API send that attests consent (who sent, to how many, when). That builds an audit trail of your attestations. It is not a per-contact consent record, so keep that record in your own system. The same principle covers lead sources: SMS goes to people who consented or replied to you. Cold outreach belongs on the phone or in the mail, not on a 10DLC campaign.

Opt-out and help keywords: required, and checked in practice

Two keyword behaviors are mandatory:

• STOP (and the common variants: STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT) must stop messages and send one confirmation. After that, nothing goes to that number.
• HELP must return a reply with your brand name, how to get support, and how to opt out.

Carriers test these, sometimes during review and sometimes after. A campaign that keeps texting after a STOP is the fastest route to a suspension.

On Ready, inbound STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE are honored automatically. The opt-out applies across campaigns, so one drip campaign can't message a contact who opted out of another. Through the API, opted-out numbers are refused before sending and aren't charged. You can check them with GET /v1/opt-outs/:phone (see the quickstart). Ready sends the HELP reply for you with your business name, how to reach you and how to opt out, from the details you registered.

Content restrictions under the 10DLC rules

Approval doesn't settle what you're allowed to send. Content is checked continuously.

If you're a nonprofit planning donation appeals or a campaign planning to text voters, email support@tryready.com before your first appeal and wait for our reply. Signing up and registering isn't enough on its own for these.

Content filtering also catches things that aren't category problems: public link shorteners, all-caps urgency, and messages that drift away from your registered samples. A campaign can be approved and still filtered. For that situation, see our post on content-level blocking after approval.

Throughput caps by trust score

After approval, your limits depend on two separate numbers.

Per-second rate (TPS), per campaign. Carriers don't publish an official rate card, so treat these as rough figures: about 1 to 4 segments per second for a fresh standard campaign without vetting, and roughly 10 to 75 for higher use-case tiers. AT&T throttles per second and per minute rather than with a hard daily cap.

T-Mobile daily brand cap, by trust score. Approximately:

• Lowest tier: ~2,000 messages/day
• Next: ~10,000
• Next: ~40,000
• Next: ~100,000
• Highest: ~200,000

Vetting moves your daily cap only if it pushes your score into a higher tier. It never changes your per-second rate.

Worked example: why segments matter for both speed and cost

Assume a 5,000-contact campaign, a 140-character message, and a fresh campaign sending at an assumed 2 segments per second.

• Plain GSM-7 text: 140 characters is 1 segment. That's 5,000 segments, or 2,500 seconds (about 42 minutes). On Ready Standard the cost is 5,000 × $0.0075 = $38, plus 5,000 × $0.0045 carrier fee.
• The same text with one emoji: the segment limit drops to 70 characters (67 per part in a multipart message), so 140 characters becomes 3 segments. That's 15,000 segments and 7,500 seconds (just over 2 hours). The cost is 15,000 × $0.0075 = $113, plus 15,000 × $0.0045 carrier fee.

These figures exclude the optional compliance surcharge: scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment when switched on for an account, and both are off by default. Ready also swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain characters before sending, so those don't inflate your count. Emoji are your choice, and one emoji costs you three times the segments and three times the send time in this example.

Keeping the campaign after approval

Registration is ongoing compliance, not a one-time form. The habits that keep campaigns live:

• Send what you registered. If your messaging changes, contact us or add a campaign through the API rather than stretching the old one.
• Respect quiet hours. Ready holds sends outside permitted local hours based on the recipient's area, and charges them only when they actually go out. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.
• Scrub before large sends. The standalone TCPA and DNC litigator scrub is $0.005 per contact. Against TCPA exposure of $500 to $1,500 per text, it's inexpensive risk reduction, not lawsuit protection. Compliance is still the sender's responsibility.
• Watch opt-out and complaint rates. A spike tells you a list or message is off before a carrier tells you.

If you need to text before approval, an account can send up to 500 texts a month before registering, at its normal per-text rate. The first 20 one-to-one texts are free. Use them before you pay for registration, because they end once you do.

Frequently asked questions

What do I need to register for 10DLC?

You need your legal business name and EIN exactly as the IRS has them, a matching business address, a live website with a privacy policy, a campaign use case and description, sample messages, and a description of how people opt in. Ready registers businesses with an EIN. If you don't have one, get one from the IRS before you submit.

Why was my 10DLC campaign rejected?

The most common causes are a brand name or EIN mismatch, a vague campaign description, sample messages that don't match the use case, and opt-in proof that doesn't clearly show SMS-specific consent. Fix the specific item the reviewer flagged and resubmit, rather than changing everything at once.

How long does 10DLC approval take?

Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. Rejections and resubmissions add time, so getting the brand details and opt-in language right on the first submission is the fastest route.

Do I need to include STOP in every text message?

You must honor STOP on every message, but you don't have to print "Reply STOP to opt out" on every text. Common practice is to include it in the first message to a new contact and periodically after that, and always in marketing messages.

Does brand vetting increase my sending speed?

No. Vetting can raise your trust score, which may raise your T-Mobile daily cap if it crosses a tier, but it doesn't change your per-second rate. At $79 Standard or $179 Enhanced, it's mainly worth it for higher-volume senders.

The practical takeaway

Carriers check four things: that you're a real business, that your use case is honest, that people opted in, and that they can opt out. After approval, your trust score sets your daily ceiling and your content has to keep matching what you registered. Put most of your effort into the opt-in description and the sample messages, since that's where first submissions usually fail.

If you want brand and campaign registration, STOP handling and quiet hours handled in one place, you can create an account and file registration in the app, or check the per-segment rate on our pricing page first.