Textbelt platform & policies

Can I use Textbelt for emergency purposes?

No, you may not offer emergency services through Textbelt, or any service that impacts life safety. Textbelt is not reliable enough for these purposes and cannot accept this liability.

How does this differ from Textbelt Open Source?

Textbelt Open Source is a free project that uses email-to-SMS gateways. This allows people to text for free with medium reliability and more carrier restrictions.

Textbelt.com is a service that costs money because we pay carriers around the world to accept and deliver SMS. It does not use potentially unreliable email-to-SMS gateways.

Originally, Textbelt was just the open source project. Carriers began blocking the publicly hosted open source version because it was too popular. We recognized the need for a more reliable service and began working with carriers to ensure text delivery. This eventually led to the paid Textbelt.com service.

How long does my quota last?

If you purchased quota before April 14, 2017, it lasts forever. If you purchase quota after that date, it will expire if 365 days go by without any usage on your key. If you send just one text every year, your quota will never expire.

We added this policy because everlasting, seemingly abandoned quotas are an outstanding liability. Other services don't face this problem because they keep a cash balance, but we like the simplicity of having one text = one quota. We avoid this uncertainty by capping quotas to a year of inactivity, which shouldn't be a problem for active users of the service.

What kinds of texts are not allowed?

The recipients of your texts should have opted in to receiving your messages. Textbelt is not for bulk advertising or spam.

Any messages that break the law in the United States (eg. scams and fraud) or any sort of harassment are prohibited.

Due to abuse, sending text messages containing URLs requires whitelist permissions. These requests are processed extremely quickly. Send an email to support to get URL sending enabled on your account, or go to https://textbelt.com/whitelist?key=yourkey.

Can you give me more information on privacy/record retention?

Under no circumstances are your phone numbers shared or sold. Phone numbers and SMS contents of new accounts may appear in our logs which are temporarily stored in order to identify spam/abuse, debug potential SMS delivery issues, and allow you to look up delivery status. Access to these records is permitted on an as-needed basis. All access is monitored and logged. After 60 days, records are wiped permanently.

You may also be interested in our Privacy Policy. If you need a custom data retention policy for your account, please email us to discuss.