What is a text message segment?

SMS segments are character batches that phone carriers use to measure text messages. Messages longer than 160 characters are automatically split into segments.

  • 0 – 160 characters – 1 segment counts as a single SMS message
  • 161 - 320 characters – 2 segments count as two SMS messages
  • 361 - 480 characters – 3 segments and count as three SMS messages
  • 481 - 640 characters – 4 segments and count as four SMS messages and so on

The 160-character limit is for messages encoded using the GSM-7 character set. Messages not encoded with GSM-7, like emojis or other special characters, are limited to 70 characters.

While you can turn on Outgoing Long Text Messages to create text messages of up to 1600 characters, those messages will still be split into segments. Longer messages of up to 1600 characters are sent by splitting the message into segments of 160 characters each (10 messages). Messages longer than 1600 characters will be truncated to fit. 

Texts with an attached media file, such as an image, audio, or video, are converted to MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and have a character limit of 1600, as long as the entire message is under 5MB in size. 

You can find more information on Text Messaging in our Enabling Text Messaging article

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