The single thing that most often stops an SMS arriving is not the route or the price. It is the sender: whether the country allows a name at all, and whether it allows yours. Here is the rule in every market Woyra serves, and what it takes to satisfy it.
| Country | Dialling | Sender rule | Opt-out keywords honoured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethiopia | +251 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, አቁም, ተወው |
| Ghana | +233 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT |
| Kenya | +254 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, ACHA, SIMAMA |
| Nigeria | +234 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, TSARA, DAINA |
| South Africa | +27 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, no registration | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT |
| Tanzania | +255 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, ACHA, SIMAMA |
| Uganda | +256 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT |
| United Arab Emirates | +971 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, إيقاف |
| United Kingdom | +44 | Alphanumeric sender IDs, no registration | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT |
| United States | +1 | Numeric senders, 10DLC registration required | STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, STOPALL |
South Africa, United Kingdom
The operators accept an alphanumeric sender without asking anyone first. Set the sender to your brand and the first message arrives under it. This is the easiest case and, in the markets Woyra serves, not the common one.
Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, United Arab Emirates
The operators accept an alphanumeric sender, but only after the name has been registered against your business. Registration runs through each operator, takes days rather than minutes, and an unregistered name is usually dropped rather than rewritten — so the traffic looks sent and never arrives.
United States
Application-to-person traffic must be registered under 10DLC: a brand, then a campaign describing what you send. Unregistered traffic is filtered rather than refused — it stops arriving, with no error to read — and the filtering tightens over time.
Every market above honours a stop word, and several honour one in the local language as well as in English. A recipient who sends one is suppressed on your account immediately, and the next send to them is refused rather than delivered.
You write nothing for this. A system that only recognises the English word is a system that keeps sending to someone who asked it to stop, which is both a complaint and, in most of these markets, a breach.
A sender that reads as a name rather than a number, up to 11 characters, so a message arrives from your brand instead of from a long number. Whether it is allowed is decided per country, not per carrier, and in several markets it is allowed only after registration.
Most often the sender. A name that is fine in a market with no registration requirement is dropped by operators in a market that requires one, and the drop is usually silent: nothing is returned to say the message was refused.
No. A name is not a routable address, so there is nothing for a reply to reach. If you need replies you need a number, which is what a long code or a short code is for.
Days, and it varies by operator and by market, because each one reviews the name against the business. Woyra files it and sends your traffic on a cleared sender in the meantime, so the wait does not block a launch.
All of it. Codes are application traffic like any other, and in the markets that filter, codes are the traffic most likely to be filtered, because they look identical to the traffic the filters exist to stop.
Woyra applies the rule for the market you are sending to, files the registration where one is needed, and tells you which sender and which carrier carried every message.
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