Twilio
A guide to Twilio in MinistryPlatform.
Twilio is a third-party application you can use with MinistryPlatform to send and receive messages within your congregation. Looking to connect with your congregants? Need to send a mass text to your congregation regarding an upcoming service? Or maybe you need to communicate with a group on a mission trip in a foreign country? Integrate your MinistryPlatform instance with Twilio to seamlessly send SMS messages to your congregation and view incoming text replies.
Cost
There is no charge from ACS Technologies for configuring the integration. Fees from Twilio depend on each church’s individual contract and your phone carrier. Pricing is based on your usage, with discounts for committed usage as you scale. See the Twilio SMS Pricing page for more information. Be sure to ask Twilio about their not-for-profit pricing!
Need to calculate what to charge your churches for how much they use Twilio? Run the SMS Usage report!
Texting Segments
Every text is limited to a certain number of characters, called a segment. If your message is longer than the limit, it creates a new segment. Sending a wordy text? Your long text will send in multiple segments. You pay by segment.
How many characters do you get per text? That depends:
- If you just use letters, numbers, and spaces, you get 160 characters.
- If you use emojis, you get 70 characters.
- Certain accented characters, non-standard spacing, smart quotes, and reassembly headers are more complex to encode and can further reduce the number of characters available per segment.
For more information, see this Twilio article.
Messaging Options
We recommend churches use toll-free numbers in Twilio. Toll-free numbers send messages faster and are less likely to be blocked by cell phone carriers. Want to process large quantities of texts faster? Get a short code! However, select the option that best suits your needs! See the table below to help make your decision.
| Long Code (A2P 10DLC) | Toll-Free | Short Code | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Format | +1 NNN XXX-XXXX (where NNN is a local area code). | +1 8NN XXX-XXXX where NN is two repeated digits (for example, +1 855). | 5 or 6 digits (for example, 12345) |
| Coverage | Can send SMS to any country, SMS guidelines allowing. | Can send SMS to any country, SMS guidelines allowing. | Can send SMS within their own country only.1 |
| Voice call capable? | Yes | Yes | No |
| Registration Requirements | A2P 10DLC registration | Toll-Free Verification | Short code application |
| Registration Restrictions | Requires US EIN or non-US tax ID. Upcoming "Sole Prop" solution will support US/Canada-based individuals without EIN. | Does not require tax ID or business license. See verification requirements. | Company address and website required. |
| SMS Filtering Profile | A2P 10DLC registration greatly reduces filtering risk. | Verification is required before sending traffic. Verification reduces risk of carrier filtering. | No carrier filtering, as long as you adhere to the use case submitted in your short code application. |
| SMS Throughput | Varies based on A2P 10DLC registration "Trust Score". | 3 SMS segments per second by default, but can be increased. | 100 SMS segments per second by default, but can be increased. |
| MMS Capable | Yes, to US/Canada | Yes, to US/Canada | Capable of MMS with a one-time enablement fee (US only) |
| Opt-in/opt-out keywords and blocklist (STOP/START) handed by carrier outside Twilio? | No | Yes | No |
| Opt-in/opt-out blocklist handled directly by Twilio by default? | Yes | Yes, as well as by carrier – see Opt-out Keyword Handling: SMS Stop Filtering for Toll Free SMS | No |
| SUpports Advanced Opt-Out for custom STOP/START/HELP responses and added keywords? | Yes | Yes, but not recommended – may create duplicate messages or blocklist conflicts due to separate carrier handling | Yes |
| Delivery Receipts | Carrier | Handset | Handset |