While Avochato does not enforce hard caps on how long your SMS can be, longer messages do cost more segments to send. Generally, the shorter your text message the better.
What is a Segment?
Avochato plans come with a set amount of segments for use within a set time period. A segment consists of one SMS message sent or received between one contact with less than 160 characters. When a message is longer than 160 characters, this is referred to as a multi-part message as it contains multiple messages. The total SMS limit then becomes 153 characters per ‘part’ as the 7 characters are used up by invisible headers and footers which denote which part of the message is being sent. Below is a breakdown:
Standard English Characters
1 - 160 characters | 1 Segment |
161 - 306 characters | 2 Segment |
307 - 459 characters | 3 Segment |
460 - 612 characters | 4 Segment |
613 - 765 characters | 5 Segment |
766 - 918 characters | 6 Segment |
It's important to note that if an SMS is greater than 1 segment it is still sent and received as one message.
What about special characters?
1 segment consists of 160 characters, only if all characters are considered "Standard." When an SMS message includes at least 1 "Special Character", the character counter drops to 70. Special characters include emojis, accents, and non-alphanumeric characters.
What about attachments?
MMS attachments like photos or gifs add an extra segment onto your message regardless of length. MMS attachments must be below 500kb to send.