Business SMS outside the US: Nigeria, India, Kenya and other markets

If you searched for bulk SMS pricing in Lagos, Mumbai or Nairobi and ended up here, one fact will save you time. Ready texts US numbers, plus Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom from a number in that country. We are a messaging platform and API built mainly on US carrier infrastructure and US registration (10DLC). We are not a local bulk SMS gateway for Nigerian, Indian or Kenyan networks.

This post covers two groups of readers. If you need to text customers in your own country, you'll see how local sender registration works and what kind of provider fits. If you're based outside the US and need to text American customers, the rest of the post shows how that works, what it costs on Ready and what to watch for.

Who this post is for

There are usually two kinds of international reader:

1. A business texting its home market. A Nigerian fintech sending OTPs, an Indian clinic chain sending reminders, a Kenyan retailer sending promos. Your recipients are on MTN, Airtel, Jio, Safaricom and similar networks. Ready is the wrong tool for this. You want a licensed local aggregator, or a global CPaaS that has registered routes in your country.
2. A business abroad texting the US. A Lagos-based SaaS company with American users, a Bangalore agency running campaigns for US clients, a Nairobi team doing customer support for a US brand. Your recipients are on US carriers, so US rules apply no matter where your office is. Ready fits here.

The rules follow the recipient's network, not the sender's passport. A text to a +1 number falls under US carrier registration and US law (TCPA). A text to a +91 number falls under India's rules.

How sender registration differs by market

Every serious SMS market has moved to some form of sender registration. The details differ, and they change often, so treat the table below as orientation, not legal advice. Confirm the current rules with your local provider before you send.

What's different from the US model

Three things tend to surprise people who move between these markets:

• Alphanumeric sender IDs vs phone numbers. In Nigeria, Kenya and India, a business usually sends from a branded name like "ACMEBANK". In the US, application-to-person traffic goes out from a 10-digit phone number (10DLC), a toll-free number or a short code. A US recipient can reply to a 10DLC number. That's why two-way conversations are normal in the US and less common on one-way alphanumeric routes elsewhere.
• Template pre-approval. India's DLT system matches outgoing content against registered templates, and a text that doesn't match can be blocked. The US doesn't approve every message. You register sample messages per campaign, and carriers filter traffic that strays far from the declared use case.
• Promotional vs transactional routes. Nigeria and India split traffic by type at the route level. The US splits it by campaign use case inside registration.

None of these systems is "easier." They put the burden in different places.

If you're texting your home market

We'd rather tell you plainly than have you sign up and find out later. Ready doesn't send to Nigerian, Indian or Kenyan numbers. For that traffic, your realistic options are:

• A licensed local aggregator. These are usually the most direct route onto local networks. They handle sender ID approval and, in India, the DLT paperwork.
• A global CPaaS such as Twilio, Telnyx or Plivo. These help if you need one API across many countries. Check that the provider has registered, compliant routes for each destination, and ask how it handles sender ID registration there.

We won't quote prices for regional routes. Rates vary by network, route type and volume, and anything we wrote would be wrong within a quarter.

If you're abroad and texting US customers

This is the case we're built for, and it's common. Teams sending from overseas tend to run into three problems:

1. Registration applies to you

US carriers filter unregistered application-to-person traffic. A team that sends from a cheap unregistered number gets filtered, no matter how good the message is. Registering a brand and a campaign gets your traffic onto registered routes. Our 10DLC explainer covers the mechanics.

The registry asks for your legal business details and a business identifier. If your company is registered outside the US, read 10DLC for Canada and Australia: does it apply outside the US? before you buy numbers. It walks through how non-US businesses fit into US registration.

On Ready, registration happens in the app with no setup fee:

• At submit: you pay the first month, $25.
• Monthly after that: $25/mo for registration, plus $2 per number.
• Approval time: most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

2. Your clock isn't the recipient's clock

This is the mistake we'd expect most often from teams outside the US. If you schedule a send for 9 AM your time, here is when it lands in US Eastern time (the US shifts by an hour for daylight saving):

• 9 AM in Lagos (UTC+1): 3 AM or 4 AM Eastern.
• 9 AM in Nairobi (UTC+3): 1 AM or 2 AM Eastern.
• 9 AM in Mumbai (UTC+5:30): 10:30 PM or 11:30 PM Eastern, the evening before.

Texting a US consumer in the middle of the night is a complaint generator and a TCPA exposure. Ready enforces quiet hours based on the recipient's area, so a send that falls outside permitted local hours is held and goes out later. You're charged only when it actually sends. 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.

The US also spans several time zones, so a single send time won't suit your whole list. Your 9AM send is 6AM for a third of your list covers how to handle that.

3. Consent and opt-outs are on you

US rules expect consented recipients. Cold contact belongs on the phone or in the mail, not in SMS.

Ready provides several protections:

• Opt-outs: STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE replies are honored automatically and apply across all campaigns.
• Attestation records: your opt-in attestation is recorded per bulk send and per API send that sets consent_attested, showing who sent, to how many and when.

That attestation record is not a per-contact consent record. The page or form where each person opted in has to keep the time, wording and URL.

If you want an extra screen, you can switch on optional add-ons:

TCPA exposure runs $500 to $1,500 per text, so a cheap screen reduces risk. It doesn't make you lawsuit-proof, and compliance stays the sender's responsibility.

What it costs: a worked example

Ready has one flat Standard rate: $0.0075 per segment, plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. Replies you receive are billed the same way.

Assumptions for this example: a Nairobi-based SaaS company sends a renewal reminder to 5,000 opted-in US customers. The message is 150 characters of plain text with no emoji, which is 1 segment.

• Ready rate: 5,000 × 1 × $0.0075 = $38
• Carrier fee: 5,000 × $0.0045, itemized separately on the bill
• Replies: if around 10% reply with a one-segment text, that's 500 more segments at the same rate plus carrier fee

That all-in figure excludes the compliance surcharge. Scrubbing and landline validation add $0.003 per segment each, but only if you switch them on.

Now add one emoji. The 150-character message becomes 3 segments, because an emoji drops the limit to 70 characters (67 per part in a multipart message). The Ready rate alone jumps to 5,000 × 3 × $0.0075 = $113, before carrier fees.

For overseas teams writing in a second keyboard layout, check the segment count before the send, not after.

A note on comparisons. Twilio (around $0.0083 per segment) and GoHighLevel/LeadConnector (around $0.0083 per message, roughly $0.0128 all-in) charge less per message for US texting. What Ready adds is the rest of the work:

• registration handled in the app
• a two-way inbox
• campaigns, quiet hours and opt-out handling built in

If you have engineers who want to assemble those pieces themselves, a raw CPaaS is a reasonable choice. Our Twilio comparison lays out that tradeoff honestly.

Sending from abroad over the API

The API doesn't care where your servers are. Here is a single text:

POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <key>
Idempotency-Key: 6f1c2a9e-0b7d-4c1e-9a55-3e2f8d1b7c40
Content-Type: application/json

{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Your order #1042 has shipped.", "consent_attested": true}

A few practical points:

• Number format: use E.164 format (+1 followed by 10 digits). A bare 10-digit number is treated as US.
• Retries: send an Idempotency-Key so a retry over a flaky connection never sends twice.
• Local numbers: Ready sends from your registered number closest to each contact's area code by default, with nothing to set on the send.
• Bulk sends: POST /v1/messages/bulk takes up to 100 recipients per call, so split larger lists into batches.

The API reference and quickstart cover the rest. Integrating an SMS API walks through retries and webhooks.

Other markets in brief

A few other markets come up in the same searches:

• South Africa: industry codes of conduct plus consent rules under POPIA.
• Ghana: rules set by the NCA.
• UK and much of the EU: alphanumeric sender IDs, with registration varying country by country.

The pattern repeats everywhere. Register who you are, prove consent, honor opt-outs, and use a provider that's licensed on the recipient's networks. For Nigeria, India, Kenya, South Africa and Ghana, Ready isn't that provider.

The practical takeaway

The recipient's country decides the rules:

• Texting Nigeria, India, Kenya or other non-US markets: use a local aggregator or a global CPaaS with registered routes there.
• Texting US customers from anywhere:
• register for 10DLC
• schedule around US time zones, not your own
• keep consent records on your opt-in pages
• count segments before you hit send

If that second case is you, you can sign up and try it before committing. A card on file is required to send, and your first 20 one-to-one texts are free. Use them before you pay for registration, because the free texts end once registration is paid. After that, you can send up to 500 texts a month at the normal rate while you get registered.