A message segment is just a text, right? Not exactly. Message segments are how the SMS industry as a whole, counts text messages.
What does counting texts mean? 🤔
Without getting too technical here, within each text message that you send there could be multiple segments.
This all depends on the number of characters a text message contains. Each message segment is broken up into 160-character chunks. So, if you your text has 320 characters, the message has 2 message segments.
Remember back in the olden days, when your little Nokia brick phone would break up a big message into several texts? Those were message segments. Now the industry can send all these segments at once in one text message.
Is every letter or symbol the same number of characters? 🔣
Great question!
Not all symbols and letters correspond to the same number of characters. Emojis, special characters, and punctuation will typically have more characters than your standard alphabet.
Curious about this breakdown? Check out the details here!
How can I figure out how many segments are in my text?
You can find several segment calculators online, but we recommend using the calculator linked below to give you the most accurate idea of message segments.
Twilio Message Segment Calculator ➕➖
*Special note! If you are including a link in your broadcast, make sure you are putting in the final branded link into the message calculator or your segment count will be increased by the number of characters in the long URL form.
Have more questions about this? Reach out to your CS Manager directly for more info.