How to schedule a text message on your phone and for business

To schedule a text message on an iPhone, open Messages, tap the + next to the text field, choose Send Later and pick a time. On Android with Google Messages, type your message, long-press the send button and choose a date and time.

That covers one text to one person. A business sending to hundreds or thousands of people has a harder problem. Phone schedulers ignore time zones, carrier registration and the legal hours you're allowed to text. The first half of this post covers the phone steps. The second half covers what changes when a scheduled send goes to a list.

How to schedule a text message on iPhone

Apple added Send Later to the Messages app in iOS 18. If your phone runs an older version, update it or use the Shortcuts workaround below.

Using Send Later (iOS 18 and newer)

1. Open Messages and start or open a conversation.
2. Tap the + to the left of the text field.
3. Tap More, then Send Later. You may need to scroll to find it.
4. Drag the time selector, or tap it, to choose the date and time.
5. Type your message and tap the send arrow.

The scheduled text appears in the thread with a dashed outline. Tap Edit on it to change the time, send it now or delete it.

Limits to know

• It only works for iMessage. A scheduled message to an Android user (a green bubble) won't go out as SMS. For those contacts, use a reminder or a third-party app.
• The scheduling window is short. You can schedule up to about two weeks ahead.
• There is no recurrence. Send Later sends once. For a weekly text, you need an automation.

The Shortcuts workaround (older iOS, or recurring texts)

Open Shortcuts, go to Automation, then New Automation, then Time of Day. Pick the time and repeat schedule, add the Send Message action, and set it to run immediately. This method also sends SMS to Android contacts. Older iOS versions sometimes ask for confirmation before running, so test it once while you're watching.

How to schedule a text on Android

Google Messages (most Android phones, including Pixel)

1. Open Messages and the conversation.
2. Type your text.
3. Press and hold the send button.
4. Choose a preset (Later today, Tonight, Tomorrow) or Pick date and time.
5. Tap Save, then the send button.

A clock icon marks the scheduled message. Tap it to update, send now or delete it. Google Messages schedules both SMS and RCS.

Samsung Messages

1. Open the conversation and tap the + beside the text field.
2. Tap Schedule message.
3. Set the date and time, tap Done, type your text and send.

On some One UI versions, the option is under the three-dot menu instead of +. The steps are otherwise the same.

Phone scheduling vs business scheduling

Phone schedulers are built for "remind my sister about dinner." They break down at business volume. Here's how the two compare:

The registration row matters more than it looks. Carriers filter unregistered business traffic. Sending a scheduled promo to 800 customers from your personal iPhone is a quick way to get the number flagged. Our 10DLC explainer explains why.

Scheduled campaigns: the business version

A scheduled campaign usually falls into one of three patterns, and each one has a different timing problem.

One-off campaigns at a set time

Think of a sale announcement or an event reminder. The risk is the clock. If you pick 10 AM, you have to decide whose 10 AM.

Drip campaigns triggered by an event

Examples include "text two days after signup" or "text 24 hours before the appointment." The schedule is relative to each contact, so the send time differs per person. Our appointment reminder guide covers timing for that case. Our post on which texts to automate covers the broader split between automated and hand-written texts.

Scheduled sends from your own software

If you run a platform that texts on behalf of your customers, scheduling often lives in your own job queue. A worker fires at the chosen time and calls the send endpoint. With Ready, that's POST /v1/messages (one text) or POST /v1/messages/bulk (the same text to many numbers).

To send one text to one contact later, Ready has a scheduled texts endpoint, POST /sms/schedule with a send_at time (see the scheduled texts docs). For a list, the usual pattern is to keep the schedule on your side and send an Idempotency-Key header, which means a retried job never double-sends. See the messages API docs and our SMS API integration walk-through for details.

What a scheduled campaign costs (worked example)

Assumptions: 2,000 opted-in contacts, a 150-character message with no emoji, on the Standard rate of $0.0075/segment plus the $0.0045 carrier fee.

• 150 GSM-7 characters is under the 160-character limit, so it's 1 segment.
• Cost: 2,000 × 1 × $0.0075. That's $15 at the Standard rate, plus 2,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees.

Ready's all-in prices per segment include the carrier fee but not screening: Scrub lists and Number validation, the two switches in Settings under Compliance, each add $0.003 per segment when switched on, shown as screening on your bill, and both are off by default. Unless you turn the opt-out footer off, the first text to each contact, and one again from time to time, also gets "Reply STOP to opt out" and your business name if the message does not already have them, so a text close to the segment limit can bill one more segment.

Now add one emoji and stretch the message to 175 characters. Unicode segments hold only 67 characters each in a multipart message, so it becomes 3 segments: 2,000 × 3 × $0.0075. That's $45 at the Standard rate before carrier fees. The emoji tripled the bill. Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending, so those characters won't push you into unicode. Emoji will.

Two more cost notes:

• Replies are billed like sent texts. A 30% reply rate on that 2,000-person send adds about 600 inbound segments.

Quiet hours: the scheduler you didn't know you needed

The TCPA restricts marketing contact to roughly 8 AM to 9 PM in the recipient's local time, and some states set narrower windows. Statutory damages run roughly $500 to $1,500 per text. A scheduled send that lands at the wrong hour can be expensive.

Ready enforces quiet hours based on the recipient's area. A campaign or automation text sent during the recipient's quiet hours is held and sent later, and charged only when it actually sends. A single API text is held only when the window opens within about 6 hours; otherwise it gets 409 QUIET_HOURS_BLOCK and nothing is sent or charged. If your job queue fires a send at 7:30 AM Eastern to a list that includes California, the California texts wait until their local window opens. You don't have to compute that yourself.

This is risk reduction, not immunity. Consent and content are still the sender's responsibility.

Time zones: whose 10 AM is it?

A US list spans at least four main time zones. If you schedule a campaign for 10 AM Eastern:

Pacific recipients get the text at 7 AM. That's inside some legal windows, but it's rude and invites STOP replies. You have three options:

1. Split the list by time zone and schedule one send per zone. This takes more work but gives you precise timing. Our segmentation post covers how to split lists.
2. Schedule late enough that the earliest zone is acceptable. For example, send at 1 PM Eastern so Pacific gets it at 10 AM.
3. Rely on quiet-hours holds as the safety net. This stops illegal-hour sends, but held texts go out when the window opens, which may be earlier than you'd choose for marketing. 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.

A related feature is local presence: Ready sends from the account number closest to the contact's area code. It has a listed price of $0.0015 for each segment of a delivered text. Every number still sits on the account's registered 10DLC campaign. Teams like it because the text comes from a familiar area code. It doesn't change when the text arrives.

Before your first scheduled business send

• Register. Brand and campaign registration costs $25 at submit, which covers the first month. After that, the monthly cost is $25/mo for registration plus $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. An account can send up to 500 texts a month before registering.
• Use the free texts first. The first 20 texts are free one-to-one sends. They end the moment you pay for registration, so test with them before you register. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it.
• Only text people who opted in. Use phone and mail for cold outreach.
• Count segments before you schedule. Do it every time, especially if the message has an emoji.

If that list fits what you need, you can sign up and schedule a small test send before committing a full list. If you only ever text a handful of people, your phone's built-in scheduler is fine.

FAQ

Can I schedule a text message on iPhone without iMessage? Not with Send Later, which only schedules iMessages. To schedule SMS to Android contacts, use a Shortcuts time-of-day automation with the Send Message action.

How far ahead can I schedule a text on Android? Google Messages lets you pick any future date and time with Pick date and time. The phone must be on and connected when the time arrives, or the text goes out once it reconnects.

Does a scheduled text send if my phone is off? On a phone, the text usually sends once the device is back online. A business platform sends from its servers, so your phone's state doesn't matter.

Will a business platform send my scheduled text at 6 AM? On Ready, no. Campaign and automation texts that would land during the recipient's quiet hours are held and sent once their local window opens, and they're charged only when they send. A single API text is held only when the window opens within about 6 hours; otherwise it is refused and not charged. Other platforms vary, so check before you schedule.

Do I need 10DLC registration to schedule business texts? For application-to-person texting at any real volume, yes. Unregistered traffic gets carrier-filtered. On Ready, you can send up to 500 texts a month before registering. After that, you need to register.