Opt-out and opt-in are two directions of the same record

Getting a number back

A recipient who opted out can opt back in. The platform deactivates the suppression record rather than deleting it, so the consent trail survives.

3 min read · updated 2026-10-13

The reverse action exists on purpose

Replying START, YES or UNSTOP removes the number from the active suppression set and sends a confirmation. Without this, a single STOP would be permanent with no path back — which is why opt-out and opt-in are required to be symmetric in the first place.

The command is matched as a whole message, not as a substring, so a message that merely contains the word does not trigger it.

Deactivated, not deleted

Resubscribing clears the active state and records when and by whom it was done. The original opt-out stays in the record. That is what makes the consent trail auditable: you can answer "was this person suppressed on the day we sent to them?" long after the fact.

The same capability exists in the console, where a manual release is attributed to the operator who performed it.

What the platform cannot undo

Releasing a number affects the messages we send. It does not affect a block applied on the carrier side — with toll-free numbers in particular, the number may have been blocked upstream, and the recipient has to release that themselves. A record that reads "active" is not proof that the handset will accept a message.

Scope. Suppression and resubscription are implemented for the SMS channel.

Keep reading

Bring your own account

The platform has no provider account of its own. That one design decision changes who owns the numbers, who holds the quota, and who appears on the invoice.

Read the guide →

SMS segments and what you actually pay for

SMS is billed per segment, not per message. Whether your text fits in one segment depends on the character set it needs — and on the encoding you set on the connection.

Read the guide →

Opt-out handling

Opt-out is two halves: the suppression record, and the check that runs before a marketing message is handed to the provider. Both run through one shared normalisation, which is the part that usually breaks.

Read the guide →

Reading a delivery receipt

A receipt is a sequence of states, not a verdict. Treating an intermediate one as final is the most common way a sending dashboard ends up lying to you.

Read the guide →

Pacing, quotas and why we queue

Every connection carries a send rate. The platform queues to that rate instead of firing as fast as a provider will accept, because the fastest way to get throttled is to send at the speed that causes it.

Read the guide →

Routing and failover

Routes are ordered by priority and weighted within a connection. The point of the arrangement is that a provider rejecting sends degrades into slower sending, not into silence.

Read the guide →

Who decides whether a message is marketing

The platform asks you to declare what kind of message you are sending instead of inferring it from the text. That one field decides whether the opt-out gate applies — and the honesty of the declaration is yours.

Read the guide →

A timeout is not a failure

Sending is accepted asynchronously and there is no de-duplication key. Retrying a request you are unsure about sends a second message and bills for it.

Read the guide →

Two endpoints that look alike and are not

Delivery receipts and inbound replies are different endpoints, configured in different places in your provider’s console. Configure only the receipt URL and opt-out handling stops — silently, with no error anywhere.

Read the guide →

What happens when your callback is down

Terminal outcomes are pushed to a URL you control, with a small bounded retry. Your handler has to tolerate a repeat, and it should not expect a call for every message.

Read the guide →

Which rate limit you just hit

There are two throttles in front of a send: the one your plan sets, and a much higher one at the network edge. Both answer with the same status code, so the message text is what tells them apart.

Read the guide →

Who the recipient actually sees

If you do not name a sender, the platform picks one from the connection that carries the message. Naming one explicitly takes priority everywhere.

Read the guide →

What the platform does not keep

Message content is not archived. What is kept is metadata — and among that metadata two fields are load-bearing, because without them a bill could not be reconciled.

Read the guide →