Customer texts not sending — troubleshooting

Few things tank customer experience faster than missing SMS. If reminders, confirmations, or replies aren't going out, work through this checklist in order.

Step 1 — Check the deliverability health banner

Go to Messages → Deliverability. If your delivery rate or failure rate is outside the healthy range (≥95% delivered, <5% failed), a warning banner appears listing the likely causes — including incomplete A2P 10DLC registration, invalid phone numbers in your customer list, or content getting flagged by carriers. Start here rather than hunting through settings.

If your shop's number isn't approved yet, texting is off for your shop — finish registration in Settings → Texting first.

If you registered your own number under Settings → Texting, check that page. Every step should show Approved and a green Texting is live banner. A step marked Needs a fix tells you what to change. See Texting from your own business number.

If you've connected your own Twilio account via Settings → Integrations → Business Texting & Email, 10DLC registration lives with Twilio directly (you register your own brand/campaign in the Twilio Console). Check your campaign status there — if it isn't approved yet, that connection card also stays in "Pending verify" until Twilio confirms.

Step 2 — Confirm your sending setup is connected

Where to look depends on how your shop sends texts:

• No approved number yet: texting is off; finish registration in Settings → Texting.
• Your own number from Settings → Texting: open Settings → Texting. Texts only go out from your number once it shows Texting is live. Until then texting is off for your shop.
• Bring Your Own Carrier: go to Settings → Integrations and check the status badge on your Twilio card. "Connected" means your credentials verified. "Pending verify" or "Not connected" means the SID/Auth Token/from-number pasted in aren't validating yet.

Still on a free trial? Texting customers turns on when your paid plan starts. Add a payment method in Settings → Plans & Billing, or contact support to turn it on sooner.

Step 3 — Confirm customer hasn't opted out

A common "missing SMS" reason: the customer replied STOP at some point. Customers page → click the customer → look for the "SMS opted out" badge (hover it to see which STOP keyword and date triggered it).

If it's there: they cannot receive marketing OR transactional SMS until they reply START. Email them and ask them to opt back in.

Step 4 — Confirm the customer's phone number is correct

Customers page → click the customer → verify phone number. Common issues:

• Missing area code (5551234567 vs (555) 123-4567)
• Wrong country code (we default to +1 US; if your customer's phone is Canadian, it should also be +1; international customers need their country code)
• Landline number — SMS won't deliver to landlines. Some carriers send a Text-to-Speech message; most just drop it.

Step 5 — Check the message template

If the customer's phone is right and they're not opted out, check the template that should be sending. Settings → Notifications → Message Templates.

Common issues:

• Template is disabled (a manager turned off "appointment reminder" templates)
• Template contains a merge field that this particular send doesn't supply, or one that isn't a real field at all (a typo, or {{shop_address}} when the real field is {{address}}) — SalesThumb doesn't block the send, it just sends with that field blank, so check the actual sent message for a blank-looking gap rather than assuming it was suppressed. The ten valid fields are listed on the Notifications page, and Configuring text reminders covers which ones each reminder actually fills in
• Template is long enough to split into several SMS segments (over 160 characters, or 70 with emoji or special characters) — keep reminders short

Step 6 — Check the message status on the customer record

Open the customer's record and look at the Conversation card — it shows the full SMS + email history with that customer. A message tagged failed inline means the carrier or Twilio rejected it; hover or check the aggregate breakdown at Messages → Deliverability for the overall pattern (delivered / sent / queued / sending / failed / undelivered counts by Twilio status code) if it looks like more than one customer is affected.

If it's a marketing text (a blast, campaign or win-back) and it hasn't gone out yet, it may be waiting for quiet hours: marketing texts only go out 8am–8pm in the customer's local time. See Texting rules: consent, STOP and quiet hours.

Step 7 — Carrier-specific issues

Carrier filtering to watch for:

• T-Mobile filter on certain words — "free", "guaranteed", "click here", "$$$" can trigger filtering. Rewrite the template in plain language.
• Verizon strict on URLs — some Verizon prefixes block short-link URLs. Use full URLs (salesthumb.com/...) instead of bit.ly or short codes.
• Opt-out keywords — carriers treat STOP and its variants as case-insensitive, so a customer replying "stop" in lowercase is opted out just the same. Our templates print it uppercase for clarity, not because case matters.

When to escalate to support

If you've worked through all 7 steps and customers still aren't receiving SMS, contact hello@salesthumb.com with:

• The customer name + phone
• The expected send time (e.g. "yesterday at 9 AM PT")
• The template name
• A screenshot of the customer's Conversation card (or the Messages → Deliverability breakdown if several customers are affected)

We can pull carrier-level logs and find the failure.

Related

• 10DLC registration
• Texting from your own business number
• Configuring text reminders
• SMS templates library

Frequently asked questions

Q: I registered my own number. Why can't I text yet?

A: Texts only go out once Settings → Texting shows Texting is live. Until every step is approved, texting is off for your shop — there's no shared SalesThumb number.

Q: Why can't my shop send texts during the free trial?

A: Texting customers turns on when your paid plan starts. Add a payment method in Settings → Plans & Billing, or contact support to turn it on sooner.

Q: A customer says they never got a text. What should I check first?

A: Check the Messages → Deliverability banner, then the customer's profile for an SMS opted out badge and a correct mobile number.

Q: Why hasn't my campaign text gone out yet?

A: Marketing texts only go out 8am–8pm in each customer's local time. Texts sent outside that window wait and go out when it opens.