What is Encoding?

Encoding refers to the type of characters that can be sent via and SMS or MMS message.  This is important because it will dictate how many characters a segment will contain.  Make sure you check the IOB screen to confirm what encoding you are using. This dictates how many characters your IOB has and should always been check before provisioning your lists or sending your first message.

GSM-7 is the standard alphabet, or better known as character encoding, used for SMS messages. It consists of 140 characters, includes most of the characters used in Latin-based languages, such as English, French (including accented characters), and Nordic characters. Additionally, all punctuation and many commonly used special characters are considered part of the GSM-7 encoding.  GSM-7 is the standard encoding for TextOut, it allows for the most characters per segment with a max of 160 characters, and 153 characters if you are using Dynamic Fields.

UCS-2 is a character encoding standard in which characters are represented by a fixed-length 16 bits (2 bytes). It is used as a fallback on many networks when a message cannot be encoded using GSM-7 or when a language requires more than 128 characters to be rendered. This often applies to character based languages and more complex single characters like emojis.  USC-2 is backup encoding for TextOut, it limits characters per segment to a max of 70 characters, and 63 characters if you are using Dynamic Fields.