No, 10DLC is not a law. No statute in the US Code says "register your brand with The Campaign Registry." No regulator will fine you for skipping it. Even so, if you send business texts from a regular 10-digit number without registering, the carriers will filter, throttle or block those texts. In practice that's the penalty that matters.
This post separates what's carrier policy from what's actual law, explains who has to register and who doesn't, and walks through what registration costs and how long it takes. The two systems overlap, and most of the confusion comes from treating them as one thing.
What 10DLC actually is
10DLC stands for "10-digit long code," which is an ordinary local phone number like (212) 555-0199. A2P 10DLC is the framework US carriers built for application-to-person (A2P) messaging over those numbers. A2P covers anything sent from software: appointment reminders, order updates, marketing campaigns, two-way sales conversations run from a CRM.
Under the framework, each business registers two things:
- A brand. This is who you are: legal name, EIN, address and website.
- A campaign. This is what you send: the use case, sample messages, how people opt in, and how they opt out.
The carriers review the registration and assign your traffic a trust level. Registered traffic gets throughput and delivery. Unregistered traffic gets filtered. If the A2P label is the confusing part, our explainer on A2P vs P2P texting covers the line between the two.
Carrier policy vs law: the two systems
The rules that govern your business texts come from two different places, and they're enforced in different ways.
| 10DLC registration | TCPA and state texting laws | |
|---|---|---|
| Who makes the rules | Carriers and the industry (CTIA guidelines, carrier codes of conduct) | Congress, the FCC, state legislatures |
| Is it law? | No. It's a private policy you agree to as a condition of using the network | Yes |
| Who enforces it | Carriers, by filtering and blocking traffic | Courts, regulators, and private plaintiffs |
| What a violation costs | Undelivered messages, suspended numbers, carrier fees | Statutory damages, often cited at $500 to $1,500 per text under the TCPA |
| What it cares about | Identity, use case, opt-in and opt-out flow, content | Consent, timing, opt-out honoring, do-not-call rules |
The carriers built 10DLC partly to keep the law's targets off their networks. Unwanted texts and unidentified senders are what TCPA suits are about. Registration doesn't satisfy the law for you, though, and following the law doesn't register you.
Registering doesn't make you TCPA-compliant
Approval means a carrier accepted your stated use case. It says nothing about whether the person you're texting today actually agreed to hear from you. Consent is still on you. That means a clear opt-in, records of when and how people opted in, and honoring STOP immediately.
Skipping registration isn't illegal, but it fails anyway
You won't get a letter from the FCC for sending unregistered A2P traffic. Your messages will simply stop arriving, and you may not find out right away. For a fuller picture of what carriers do to unregistered senders, see 10DLC enforcement: carrier fines, blocking and what unregistered sending costs.
Who has to register
If any of the following is true, you need 10DLC registration:
- You text customers from a local 10-digit number through any software. This includes a CRM, a texting app, an API, GoHighLevel, or a help desk with SMS.
- You send to US mobile numbers on the major carriers. The framework covers US carrier traffic.
- You run a platform that texts on behalf of your customers. Each of your customers is usually its own brand, and each needs its own registration. Our post on 10DLC for SaaS platforms covers who registers what in that setup.
- You're a sole proprietor or small local business. Being small doesn't exempt you. Carriers have a lighter path for businesses without an EIN, but Ready registers businesses with an EIN only, so get one before you sign up with us.
The question we hear most often is "I only send a few texts a week. Do I really need this?" Volume isn't the test. The test is whether software sends business messages from a local number. For the year-specific version of this question, see Is A2P 10DLC required to send business SMS?
Who doesn't need 10DLC registration
Some senders don't register for 10DLC, and they aren't breaking anything:
- Toll-free senders. Texting from an 800, 888 or similar number goes through a separate toll-free verification process. It's a different review, not an exemption from review.
- Short code senders. Five- and six-digit short codes have their own, longer approval process.
- Genuine person-to-person texting. This means you, on your own phone, typing to a customer one at a time. Once a platform, automation or shared business inbox is sending, you're in A2P territory.
- iMessage. Texts sent as iMessage don't travel over the carrier SMS network. That's why Ready's blue line (iMessage for business, $99 a month per line plus 6 cents a segment) needs no 10DLC registration and can start texting as soon as the line is set up. The catch: texts to Android phones fall back to your regular number at the regular text price if you already had a number; if the blue line came with its green number, your account's texts bill at 6 cents a segment once you register. That number still needs registration. Details are in the blue line docs.
Every one of these routes has rules attached. None of them is a way to send unreviewed bulk traffic.
What happens if you skip it
Here's the realistic sequence for an unregistered A2P sender, framed generally because carriers don't publish an exact playbook:
- Filtering. Messages get silently dropped. Your software may show them as sent while the recipient never sees them.
- Throttling. Delivery slows to a crawl, which breaks anything time-sensitive, like a 9 AM appointment reminder.
- Carrier surcharges. Some carriers charge more for unregistered traffic, and those fees get passed down to you.
- Number suspension. Persistent unregistered traffic can get the number blocked outright, and any reputation it built goes with it.
The legal risk comes on top of all that. Unregistered senders tend to skip the other things registration forces you to think about, like opt-in language and STOP handling. Those gaps are what TCPA claims are built on.
The registration path, step by step
Registration is the same industry process whether you go through Ready, Twilio, GoHighLevel or another provider. Those other providers are perfectly fine places to do it. What differs is how much of the form-filling the platform handles, and what else comes in the box.
On Ready, the steps are:
- Get your website in order. Carriers check for a privacy policy that says you won't share mobile numbers, plus visible SMS terms.
- Submit the brand. This covers legal name, EIN, address and website.
- Submit the campaign. Pick the use case that matches what you actually send, write sample messages, and describe your opt-in flow.
- Wait for review. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.
You can check status in the app, or through GET /v1/registration if you're building on our API. The quickstart covers the setup.
What it costs on Ready
There's no setup fee. At submit, you pay the first month, which is $25. After that, the monthly cost is $25/mo for registration, and $2/mo per number.
Worked example: assume one brand, one campaign and one number, sending 2,000 single-segment texts a month (160 GSM characters or fewer, no emoji).
- Registration: $25/mo for registration and $2/mo per number
- Messaging: 2,000 × $0.0075 = $15, plus 2,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fee
- Replies you receive are billed like sent texts. If 400 people reply, add 400 × ($0.0075 + $0.0045).
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.
Twilio and GoHighLevel's LeadConnector charge less per message than our Standard rate. We don't compete on that number. What you get with Ready is in-app registration, opt-out handling, quiet-hours enforcement and a full CRM in one place.
Sending while you wait
You don't have to go dark during review. Each account has 20 free texts, and they're one-to-one sends. Use them before you register, because they end the moment a registration is paid for.
An account can also send up to 500 texts a month before registering, at its normal per-text rate. After that, it has to register. If you've bought your own number, you send on our shared registration at the same rate while your own registration is in review. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it.
What registration doesn't cover
Getting approved is the floor, not the ceiling. These pieces are the ones that keep the legal side in check:
- Consent you can prove. Ready records the sender's opt-in attestation per campaign you send and per API send that attests consent: who sent, to how many, and when. That's an audit trail of your promise, not a per-contact consent record. Your signup form or store should keep the opt-in time, wording and page URL for each contact.
- STOP handling. Ready honors STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE automatically, and the opt-out applies across every campaign.
- Quiet hours. Sends are held outside permitted local hours, based on the recipient's area. 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.
- Litigator and DNC scrubbing. This screens out known TCPA litigators and DNC complainers before a send.
These reduce risk. They don't make anyone lawsuit-proof, and compliance stays the sender's responsibility.
The short version
10DLC is carrier policy, not law. Skipping it won't land you in court, but it will land your messages in a filter. The TCPA and state laws are the legal side, and registration doesn't satisfy them for you. If software sends your business texts from a local number, register, and handle consent and opt-outs alongside it.
If you want to see what the registration form asks for before you commit, you can create an account, use your free one-to-one texts, and submit when your website and sample messages are ready.