Ringless voicemail is often sold as a loophole. The phone never rings, a message lands in voicemail, and the vendor's pitch says it isn't a "call," so consent rules don't apply. That argument lost at the FCC in 2022. If you're comparing ringless voicemail vendors on price per drop, the per-drop price is the smallest number in the decision. The larger one is $500 to $1,500 per message under the TCPA.
This post covers how US regulators treat ringless voicemail and auto dialers, how Canada's rules differ, and why we chose not to build either into Ready. It is a plain-English overview, not legal advice. If your business model depends on prerecorded outreach, talk to a TCPA attorney before you launch.
What the FCC decided about ringless voicemail
In November 2022 the FCC issued a declaratory ruling on a petition from a ringless voicemail company. The petition argued that a voicemail delivered straight to the carrier's voicemail server, with no ring, falls outside the TCPA. The FCC disagreed. Ringless voicemail is a "call" to a wireless number made with an artificial or prerecorded voice, so the TCPA's consent rules apply in full.
In practice:
- Prerecorded ringless voicemail to a cell phone needs prior express consent.
- If the message is marketing (selling, promoting, booking a sales appointment), it needs prior express written consent: a signed or e-signed agreement that names your business and covers prerecorded or automated calls. For the difference between consent types, see prior express written consent vs implied consent.
- AI-generated voices count as "artificial." A 2024 FCC ruling confirmed that a cloned or synthetic voice gets the same treatment as a recording. A personalized AI voicemail is still a prerecorded call in the TCPA's eyes.
Damages are $500 per violating message, and up to $1,500 if a court finds the violation willful. Class actions multiply those figures across every recipient. A 5,000-number ringless campaign with no consent carries a theoretical exposure of $2.5 million at the low end.
Auto dialers after Facebook v. Duguid
"Auto dialer" covers two separate legal questions, and people often mix them up.
The ATDS definition narrowed
In 2021 the Supreme Court's Facebook v. Duguid decision narrowed the federal definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS). Equipment now has to store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator. Most modern CRM dialers that call from a list fall outside that definition.
What Duguid didn't change
- Prerecorded and artificial voice rules. These apply regardless of the dialing equipment, so ringless voicemail and voicemail drop are still covered.
- Do Not Call rules. National DNC registration and your own internal DNC list still apply to telemarketing calls. Our post on the three lists compliance teams confuse explains how DNC, litigator and TCPA lists differ.
- Abandoned-call limits. Predictive dialers that connect a person to silence or a hang-up have to keep abandonment under 3% per campaign, measured over 30 days, under FCC telemarketing rules.
- State "mini-TCPA" laws. Several states, including Florida and Oklahoma, use broader autodialer definitions than the federal one. A dialer that is fine federally can still create state exposure.
We cover multi-line and power-style setups in more depth in multi-line dialers for cold calling and AI dialers and their compliance risks.
Canada: ADAD rules, the DNCL and CASL
Canada regulates outbound calling through the CRTC's Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules. Three parts matter here.
- Automatic Dialing-Announcing Devices (ADADs). Using an ADAD for solicitation is prohibited without the recipient's express consent. A prerecorded message delivered with no live person on the line is what the ADAD rules regulate. Unless counsel tells you otherwise, treat a ringless voicemail drop to a Canadian number as an ADAD message that needs express consent.
- National DNCL. Telemarketers have to register with the National Do Not Call List, buy a subscription and scrub against it. Some exemptions exist, such as existing business relationships, with time limits.
- Calling hours. Telemarketing calls are limited to 9 AM to 9:30 PM on weekdays and 10 AM to 6 PM on weekends, in the recipient's local time.
Texts fall under a different law. CASL, Canada's anti-spam law, covers commercial electronic messages, which includes SMS. It requires consent (express, or implied in narrow cases), sender identification and a working unsubscribe in every message. CASL's penalties are administrative and can be large, so don't assume Canada is gentler than the US.
Side-by-side
| Outreach type | US (FCC / TCPA) | Canada (CRTC / CASL) | In Ready? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ringless voicemail, prerecorded or AI voice | A "call"; prior express written consent for marketing | Treated like ADAD; express consent | No |
| Predictive / auto dialing | Duguid narrows ATDS; DNC and 3% abandonment rules still apply | DNCL, calling hours, ADAD if prerecorded | No |
| Voicemail drop on a live call | Prerecorded message rules apply | ADAD rules likely apply | No |
| Manual click-to-call by a person | DNC rules apply to telemarketing | DNCL and calling hours apply | Yes, Ready Dialer |
| SMS to consented contacts | TCPA consent, 10DLC registration | CASL consent, ID, unsubscribe | Yes |
Why we don't sell ringless voicemail or auto dialing
We make Ready, so here is the reasoning behind leaving these features out.
The legal case is weak and the downside lands on you. Compliance is always the sender's responsibility. Ringless voicemail is usually bought to reach people who haven't agreed to hear from you, which is exactly the situation the 2022 ruling covers. Building a product whose main use case is the one regulators have named felt like selling customers a liability.
It hurts the deliverability of everyone else. Carriers and regulators look at the reputation of a platform's traffic as a whole. Prerecorded cold outreach on shared infrastructure creates complaints that can hurt customers who are doing everything right.
Our stance on cold contact is consistent. Cold outreach goes by phone (a person dialing, scrubbed against DNC) or by mail. SMS goes to people who opted in or replied.
So the Ready Dialer does not include queue dialing, auto-dialing, voicemail drop, transfer or monitoring features. It is a dial pad. A person clicks a number and talks to whoever answers. The call is recorded and transcribed only with consent, and missed inbound calls show up as a Missed call card in the contact's Inbox thread.
What compliant calling and texting actually cost
Here is a worked example with stated assumptions: 200 inbound leads who filled out a form with SMS consent. Each gets one text and one manual call.
Texting. A 140-character confirmation with no emoji is 1 segment.
- 200 × $0.0075 = $1.50 at the Standard rate
- plus 200 × $0.0045 carrier fee
- This all-in figure excludes the optional compliance surcharge. DNC/litigator scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment when switched on, and both are off by default.
Calling. The Ready Dialer bills $0.025 per answered minute. Each started minute counts as a full minute, with no seat plans and no included minutes.
- Assume 30% of the 200 calls are answered, an average of 3 billed minutes each: 60 × 3 × $0.025 = $4.50.
- The 140 ring-outs and busy lines cost nothing.
- A call answered by voicemail counts as answered. If your rep leaves a live message, those minutes bill like any connected call.
Optional standalone scrub. Checking all 200 numbers against TCPA-litigator and DNC-complainer lists costs $0.005 per number.
Every piece of the touch is billed per segment and per minute with the carrier fee on top, and every piece of it is defensible. Compare that with a single TCPA claim at $500 a message. For the texting side, our explainer on whether the TCPA covers text messages covers the consent basics.
Where other tools fit
If you have documented prior express written consent for prerecorded calls and an attorney has reviewed your scripts, ringless voicemail vendors and predictive dialers exist and can operate legally. We aren't saying the category is illegal. We're saying it's narrow, and the people who usually ask about it are trying to skip consent, which the 2022 ruling closed off.
The practical takeaway
- Ringless voicemail is a call. A prerecorded or AI voice needs consent, and written consent for marketing.
- Duguid narrowed the federal autodialer definition. DNC, abandonment and state laws still apply.
- In Canada, assume ADAD rules cover prerecorded drops, scrub against the DNCL and follow CASL for texts.
- The defensible path is people dialing manually, plus texting to contacts who opted in.
If that's how you already work, you can see what's included in Ready or create an account. Your first 20 one-to-one texts are free, so use them before you register.