10DLC registration: the cost, the wait and why it gets sent back

If you want to text your leads from a normal US phone number, the carriers make you register first. The registration is called 10DLC, for “ten-digit long code,” which is their name for an ordinary number. It is a form, a few fees and a wait, and it is easy to get sent back.

We text from registered numbers ourselves. Our floor sent 165,000 texts in eight weeks. We also built the screens our customers register through, so we have read the carriers’ rules more closely than anyone should have to. This post is what we learned: what you register, what it costs, how long it takes, and the reasons applications come back.

The short answer

You register twice. First the business, then the texts.

The business check costs $4.50 and usually takes minutes. The review of your texts costs $15 each time it is read, usually takes one to two weeks, and is where almost all the trouble is. After that you pay a small monthly fee for as long as you text.

Most of the reasons for being sent back can be checked before you send anything. That is the useful part of this post.

Who needs it

Any business that texts people in the US from a regular local number. It makes no difference whether a rep types each text or software sends a thousand. To the carriers, a business texting a person is “application to person,” and it has to be registered.

Since February 2025 they block texts from unregistered numbers outright. Before that the texts were slowed down and charged more. Now they don’t arrive.

Toll-free numbers and short codes have their own registrations. This post is about ordinary local numbers.

The two things you register

The business. The carriers call this the brand. It is your legal name, your EIN, your address, the kind of company you are, a contact, and your website. It is checked against tax records.

The texts. They call this the campaign. It is what you text about, how the people you text agreed to it, a sample of each kind of text, the replies your numbers send to HELP and STOP, and the pages on your website that back all of it up.

Your phone numbers are then tied to the campaign. One business can have more than one campaign, and the numbers on each can only send what that campaign describes.

What it costs

These are the carriers’ fees. We pass them on at cost, and you would pay much the same anywhere.

A small team on low volume starts for $25.50: $4.50, then $15, then $6 for the first three months. After that it is $2 a month.

The line to watch is the $15. It is charged for each read. If the reviewers send your application back and you send it in again, that is another $15, and nothing is refunded for a failed one. So the cost of a careless application isn’t the fee. It is the fee two or three times, and the weeks.

On top of registration the carriers take a cut of every text, about a third to half a cent. Some texting tools show it as its own line and some fold it into the price of a text, so check which yours does.

How long it takes

The business check is fast. It usually comes back within minutes, and sometimes takes longer.

The texts are read by people. The carriers don’t publish a promise for how long that takes. What we tell our customers is five to ten working days, and it can run longer.

Two things follow from that. Start the registration before you need to text, not the week you planned to. And treat a rejection as costing two weeks, because that is the real price of one.

Why applications get sent back

These are the reasons reviewers give most often, in the order you would run into them.

1. The legal name and the EIN don’t match. The name has to be exactly what is on your IRS letter, with the LLC or Inc. on the end. The name on your sign or your website is often not it. This is the most common reason a business isn’t verified.

2. The application doesn’t show how people agreed to be texted. This is the big one. Reviewers want to see where a person gave you their number and the exact words they agreed to. “Customers opt in on our website” isn’t enough. “People enter their mobile number on the quote form on our home page and tick a box that reads ‘I agree to receive texts from Northline Solar about my quote’” is. If there’s a form, they open your site and look for it.

3. The privacy page is missing one sentence. Reviewers look for a plain promise that you don’t share mobile numbers or texting consent with third parties for marketing. A privacy policy written from a template usually says the opposite, somewhere in a paragraph about partners. The sentence that passes is close to this:

We do not share mobile numbers or text messaging consent with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.

4. The terms page says nothing about texts. They look for a short section on text messages: what people are agreeing to receive, that message and data rates may apply, and how to stop.

5. The sample texts don’t look like the application. Every sample should name your business and say how to stop. If you said your texts carry no links and a sample has one, it comes back. Link shorteners are refused. And a sample has to fit the kind of text you said you send.

6. The website can’t be opened. A site that is down, has no secure address, or is a single page with no terms and no privacy policy fails before anyone reads your texts.

None of these are judgment calls. Each one can be checked by reading your own website and your own application before it is sent.

How we set it up for our customers

When we built texting into TalaLevel, the first version of registration was a form, much like the carriers’ own. It asked for things most people don’t have to hand: the legal name as the IRS has it, what their own privacy policy says, a paragraph on how leads opt in.

So we rebuilt it around one question: what is your website?

You type the address. We open the site and read it: the logo, the legal name, the address, what you sell, the form that asks for a mobile number, and the terms and privacy pages. Whatever we found is filled in, with a note of where on the site it came from. Whatever we didn’t find, we say so and ask. We never guess an EIN.

To show it on a site you can check for yourself, we typed in sunrun.com. Sunrun isn’t a customer of ours. It’s a well-known site with a quote form, and this is what came back.

You check the business details and press verify. That charges the $4.50 and sends the business to the carriers. The answer usually comes in minutes, and you don’t have to sit and wait for it. We email you when it’s back.

While that check runs, the texts are already written for you. From your site we draft what the texts are for, how your leads agree to them, a sample of each kind of text you send, and the replies to HELP and STOP. The samples sit on a phone on the screen, and you click one to change it.

This is the draft for the same site, word for word as it came out. Where it couldn’t see something it says so: it found the quote form but not the consent wording beside the number field, so it left a note for the owner to paste it in.

Under the drafts is a list of checks, and they run again each time you change a word. Every sample names the business. Every sample says how to stop. No link shorteners. The opt-in says where people give their number and quotes what they agree to. These are the same reasons from the list above, turned into ticks.

Then we read the three pages a reviewer will open, your home page, your terms and your privacy policy. If the privacy sentence is missing, we show you the sentence and where it goes, you paste it into your site, and we read the page again.

Last is a receipt with the fees from the table above, and one button.

If the reviewers still send it back, you see their reason in their words next to the part it is about. You fix it and send it again.

Nothing in these pictures was sent to the carriers. The read and the draft are the real ones, run on a practice account.

What you get once you’re approved

Approval comes with limits, and they belong to the business, not to each number.

T-Mobile gives each business a number of texts a day, shared across all its campaigns and numbers:

AT&T limits texts a minute for each campaign: 75 on low volume, and from 240 to 4,500 on standard, by the same score.

Verizon doesn’t publish a number. It filters on what the texts say.

We found the T-Mobile limit the hard way. Ours was 2,000 a day, and adding more numbers did nothing, because the limit was on the business. If you plan to text big lists every day, low volume won’t carry it. You need a standard campaign and the vetting, which is an outside firm scoring your business from 0 to 100.

A sole proprietor with no EIN can register too, with lower limits: 1,000 texts a day on T-Mobile and 15 a minute on AT&T.

Registered doesn’t mean delivered

This catches people out. Registration gets your numbers onto the network. It doesn’t stop the carriers reading what you send.

While fully registered, we had one follow-up text blocked on 82 of 86 T-Mobile numbers. We changed one line and it passed on 42 of 43. AT&T blocked almost nothing of ours in the same weeks, so an overall delivery figure would have hidden it. The whole story, with the wordings that got blocked, is in what 165,000 sales texts taught us.

So after you’re approved, test new wording on about a hundred numbers on each carrier before you send it to a list.

Before you send your application

1. Find your IRS letter and copy the legal name from it, character for character.
2. Make sure your website opens on a secure address and has a terms page and a privacy page.
3. Put the no-sharing sentence in your privacy policy.
4. Add a short section on text messages to your terms.
5. If you collect numbers on a form, put the words people agree to right next to the box, and name your business in them.
6. Write one sample for each kind of text you send. Name the business and say how to stop in every one.
7. Start with low volume unless you already know you’ll send more than 2,000 texts a day.
8. Send it two weeks before you need it.

What we don’t know

We can’t see inside the carriers’ review. The reasons above are the ones reviewers write back with and the ones the carriers’ own rules spell out. A reviewer can still send back an application that passes every check, and we have no number for how often.

The waiting times aren’t the carriers’ promise. They don’t publish one, and the wait moves.

Fees change too. The ones here are what the carriers charged in November 2026.

Registration is part of texting in TalaLevel, on Pro and Scale. More on the sales texting page.