EZ Texting Review: The Compliance Features Are the Product, Because TCPA Damages Are Per Message

Anyone buying an SMS platform should understand the liability before the features. The statute. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs calls and texts to mobile numbers. Statutory damages are $500 per violation, and a court may treble that to $1,500 per violation where the violation was wilful or knowing. "Per violation" means per message, which is why the arithmetic escalates so fast. The private right of action is the mechanism. Individuals can sue directly and do not need to show actual damage, which has produced a substantial plaintiffs' bar and a steady stream of class actions. What consent actually has to look like: Prior express written consent is generally required for marketing texts sent using an automated system. Written consent must be a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the person agrees to receive marketing messages at a specific number, that consent is not a condition of purchase, and that message and data rates apply. Consent must be to the specific number and cannot be assumed from an existing business relationship for marketing purposes. A pre-checked box is not consent. Nor is burying the agreement in terms of service. You must keep records proving consent — who, when, what wording they saw, and from what IP or channel. When a claim arrives, the records are the entire defence, and businesses that cannot produce them settle. Honouring opt-outs: STOP, and its variants, must work immediately and automatically. Continuing to message someone who opted out is the most common and least defensible violation. Opt-out must be honoured across your systems, not just in the platform that received it. Timing and content rules: Do not text outside 8am–9pm in the recipient's local time zone. Identify your business in the message. Some states impose stricter requirements than federal law — several have their own mini-TCPA statutes with their own damages. Check where your recipients are. This is why a platform's compliance tooling is its most valuable feature. Automatic opt-in capture with stored proof, automatic STOP processing, and quiet-hours enforcement do not make you compliant on their own — you can still upload a purchased list and destroy yourself — but they remove the most common ways ordinary businesses fall over accidentally.

This is the operational half of SMS marketing and it confuses almost everyone new to it. What 10DLC is. Ten-Digit Long Code — the standard US phone number format — registered for Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging. US carriers now require businesses sending automated messages to register their brand and their campaigns, declaring who you are, what you will send and how you collect consent. Why it exists. Carriers were drowning in spam sent from unregistered numbers. Registration ties messages to an accountable entity, and unregistered traffic is heavily filtered or blocked outright. What it means practically: Registration takes time and can be rejected. Build it into your timeline — a campaign planned for next week may not be sending next week. Your declared use case must match what you actually send. Registering for appointment reminders and then sending promotions is how throughput gets throttled. There are registration and per-message carrier fees, which sit on top of platform pricing. Ask what the total per-message cost is including carrier fees, not just the platform rate. Throughput is limited by your registered trust score. A new brand sends more slowly than an established one. Short codes versus long codes versus toll-free. Short codes (five to six digits) have the highest throughput and the highest cost and setup time. Toll-free numbers can be verified for A2P and sit in between. 10DLC is the standard route for most small and mid-sized businesses. Ask which your plan uses. On deliverability. Carriers filter aggressively, and a message that is accepted by the platform is not necessarily delivered. Real-time deliverability monitoring, which this platform advertises, is genuinely useful — because the failure mode in SMS is silent. Ask what visibility you get: accepted, delivered, or neither. Content that triggers filtering: URL shorteners on shared domains, all-caps, excessive punctuation, and — unsurprisingly — the regulated categories (cannabis, firearms, gambling, high-risk lending). If you are in one of those, ask before signing up whether the platform and carriers will carry your traffic at all.

A fair review should address the strategic question, not just the tooling. The case for SMS. Open rates are extraordinarily high compared with email — a text is read, usually within minutes. For appointment reminders, delivery updates, order status, urgent alerts and time-sensitive offers, that immediacy is genuinely valuable and customers generally welcome it. The case against overusing it. SMS is the most intrusive channel you have access to. It arrives on the device people keep beside their bed. The tolerance for marketing volume is far lower than in email, and the punishment is immediate: an opt-out is permanent, and unlike an unread email it is a customer relationship you have actively spent. The rule that follows: use SMS for things the recipient wants to know, and email for things you want them to know. Appointment reminders, shipping notifications and genuine account alerts are the strongest use cases. Weekly promotional blasts are how lists die. Practical guidance for anyone starting: Set expectations at opt-in. State the message frequency. People who know what they signed up for complain less and stay longer. Send less than you think. List attrition from over-messaging is the most common failure in SMS marketing, and it is invisible until the list is gone. Segment. A relevant message to 500 people beats an irrelevant one to 5,000, and costs less. Make replying possible. Two-way conversation is where SMS beats every other channel — a customer who can answer a text is a customer you can serve. Measure opt-out rate as your primary health metric, not click rate. Rising opt-outs mean you are spending the asset. On the platform's own claims. The site features a case study of a real estate firm generating $1 million in additional revenue and 16 deals closed via text. Case studies are selected and not typical, and a real estate transaction has a very high value per conversion — the same programme in a low-margin category would produce very different arithmetic. Model your own numbers before assuming a comparable result. And "no hidden fees" plus "unlimited contacts" are good terms — just confirm what "unlimited contacts" means when the per-message cost is where the spend actually sits. Storing contacts is cheap; messaging them is not.

What does EZ Texting cost? Per-message rates on the pages we saw ranged around $0.01 to $0.04, with plan tiers and unlimited contacts. Confirm the total per-message cost including carrier fees at signup. What is TCPA and why does it matter? The Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs texts to mobile numbers. Statutory damages are $500 per violating message, up to $1,500 for wilful violations, with a private right of action — which is why SMS is heavily class-actioned. What consent do I need? Generally prior express written consent: a clear, conspicuous disclosure that the person agrees to receive marketing messages at that specific number, that consent is not a purchase condition, and that message and data rates apply. Keep proof. Can I text my existing customers? An existing business relationship does not by itself supply marketing consent. Get and document express written consent. What is 10DLC? Ten-digit long code registered for application-to-person messaging. US carriers require brand and campaign registration; unregistered traffic is filtered or blocked. Why did my messages not arrive? Carrier filtering. Common triggers include shared URL shorteners, all-caps, excessive punctuation and regulated categories. Ask what delivery visibility your plan provides. When can I send? Between 8am and 9pm in the recipient's local time zone, and identify your business. Several states impose stricter rules than federal law. How often should I send? Less than you think. Rising opt-out rate is the metric to watch — it means you are spending the list. Can I use a purchased list? No. Consent cannot be purchased, and messaging a bought list is direct statutory exposure. What is SMS actually best for? Appointment reminders, delivery and order updates, genuine alerts, and time-sensitive offers to people who asked for them. Use email for what you want them to know.