One emoji can triple the cost of an SMS campaign

An SMS holds 160 characters using the GSM-7 alphabet. Paste in a curly quote from Word, an em dash, or one emoji, and the message switches to UCS-2 — which holds 70 characters per part.

A 150-character message: one SMS. The same message plus one emoji: three. Nothing visible changed.

On a real campaign

Across fifty thousand recipients, that is the difference between a campaign you budgeted for and one costing three times as much — discovered on the invoice, weeks later.

Connect24 counts segments the way the carrier does and shows you the count while you are writing. The estimate you approve is the amount you are charged.