If texts stopped going out partway through the month and nothing looks broken, check your messaging spend cap before you go hunting for a Twilio problem. Every shop is governed by two separate limits: an included monthly message allowance that comes with your plan, and a hard dollar cap on overage past that allowance. Hit the second one and SalesThumb refuses to send — loudly on some screens, silently on others.
What your plan includes each month
- Free trial and Basic ($99/mo) — no outbound SMS or email at all. Any send attempt is refused with "Your plan doesn't include outbound messaging. Upgrade to Starter or higher to send."
- Starter ($199/mo) — 500 SMS and 5,000 emails per month
- Growth ($399/mo) — 2,500 SMS and 25,000 emails per month
- Pro ($599/mo) — 10,000 SMS and 50,000 emails per month
Two things about how that gets counted. The plan cards label the SMS number "segments," but the allowance check actually counts messages — a long text the carrier splits into two segments still only counts as one against your allowance (segment math only shows up later, in the overage cost). And the count includes every outbound message logged that month, including ones that failed or were skipped, so a run of failed texts still eats allowance. The email figures aren't printed on the plan cards at all — they live in the enforcement layer and in your usage panel.
The counters run on the calendar month and reset on the 1st.
The spend cap is a second, separate limit
Your allowance is measured in messages. The cap is measured in dollars of overage — what you'd run up past the included allowance. Every shop starts at $100 per month, metered at $0.015 per SMS segment and 0.05 cents per email. At the default cap that's roughly 6,600 extra text segments beyond whatever your plan already includes before sending halts.
Be clear about what the cap is and isn't: there is no messaging-overage line on your SalesThumb invoice today. Nothing in the billing code charges you for overage. That rate is the meter the cap counts against, not a bill. What the cap actually does is stop sending.
Where to see where you stand
Settings → Payments, in the Messaging spend cap card. It shows SMS sent this month against your allowance, emails sent against your allowance, overage dollars so far against your cap with a progress bar, a projected end-of-month overage based on your pace so far, and a "Cap reached — new sends are paused" flag once you're there.
What actually happens at the cap, screen by screen
- Texting a customer from the inbox — the send is refused outright with an error: "Monthly messaging spend cap reached ($100.00 overage). Raise the cap in Settings → Payments, or buy a Volume Pack to extend your included allowance."
- Bulk blast or Campaigns when you're already at cap — the whole send is rejected up front with that same message. Nothing goes out and nothing is logged.
- Bulk blast or Campaigns when you cross the cap mid-send — recipients already dispatched still go. The rest are marked skipped with the reason "spend_cap_reached," and each one still gets a logged row so you can see exactly who wasn't reached.
- Drip campaigns — the enrollment is parked with status ERROR, the cap message stored as its error, and no next step scheduled.
- Appointment reminders, review requests, and other automations — the run is marked failed. Nothing surfaces in the UI at all; the blocked send is written to your message history so it can be traced after the fact.
The gotcha: the banner blames your provider
After a bulk send, the Bulk blast page reports "N skipped (SMS not configured)" and the Campaigns page reports "N skipped (provider not configured)". That wording is hardcoded — it's what you see regardless of why a recipient was skipped. Cap-blocked recipients and recipients with no phone or email on file both land in that same number. Don't read it as proof your carrier is broken.
To confirm what really happened, open Messages → Deliverability and look at the status breakdown. It groups by provider status, so cap-blocked sends show up in their own spend_cap_reached row rather than being folded in with delivery failures.
Two other limits people mistake for the cap
- Daily SMS limit — a separate burst guard, defaulting to 1,000 outbound SMS/MMS per shop per day. The message reads "Daily SMS limit reached (1,000 per day). Sending resumes after midnight UTC, or contact support to raise the limit." Note that it resets at midnight UTC, not your local midnight, so on the US west coast that's late afternoon.
- Platform-wide pause — a rare, all-shops kill switch we trip if carrier costs spike across the platform. The message is "Messaging is temporarily paused platform-wide while we review carrier costs. Please try again shortly or contact support." Nothing about your own shop caused it and nothing you change in Settings will clear it.
If you bring your own Twilio or Resend
Connect verified credentials under Settings → Integrations → Bring Your Own Carrier and the spend cap stops applying to that channel entirely — you're paying the carrier directly, so your own Twilio or Resend invoice becomes the only governor. It's resolved per channel: bring your own Twilio for SMS while still sending email through us and the cap still governs your email.
One trap worth naming: a Twilio number that we provisioned for you as a platform subaccount is not the same thing as bringing your own carrier. Those sends are still on our bill, so the spend cap still applies to them even though you have a shop-specific number.
Raising the cap
Settings → Payments → Messaging spend cap → Raise cap, type a dollar figure, then Save cap. Restrictions worth knowing:
- Only an Owner or Admin can change it. Front-desk and technician accounts can see the panel and type in the box, but the save is refused at the API.
- Every change is written to the audit log with the before and after values.
- The self-serve range is $0 to $1,000 per month of overage. Anything higher needs us — email info@roffik.com.
- Setting it to $0 means no overage at all: sending stops the instant your included allowance is used up.
Volume Packs aren't buyable yet
Both the at-cap error message and the payments page mention Volume Packs — extra SMS/email allowance stacked on top of your plan. They aren't purchasable today; no screen or checkout writes them to your shop, and the payments page itself flags them as coming soon once you get close to a limit. Until they ship, the only two real levers are raising your cap and upgrading your plan.
What resets on the 1st — and what doesn't
Usage counters and overage dollars reset with the calendar month. What does not restart on its own: drip enrollments that errored out at the cap (their next step was cleared, not rescheduled) and automation runs marked failed. Those stay stopped. After any month where you hit the cap, sweep your drip enrollment list for ERROR rows and re-enroll the customers who got cut off — nothing picks them back up automatically.
Q: I raised the cap and sends still aren't going out. Now what?
A: Check whether you're on Basic or the free trial (no allowance at any cap), whether you tripped the daily SMS limit instead, and whether the customer has opted out. See Customer texts not sending — troubleshooting for the full checklist.
Q: Do drips, reminders, and bulk blasts each get their own allowance?
A: No — one shared pool per shop. A busy drip roster, your appointment reminders, and a Saturday blast all draw from the same monthly allowance and the same dollar cap.