Business texting approval

Texting sends from your own business number — the same number your assistant answers. Before it can text customers, US carriers require a one-time registration (called A2P 10DLC). It's an anti-spam rule, not ours, and every provider has to follow it.

You'll need an EIN (federal tax ID). Carriers register texting to a tax-verified business. If you don't have one, an EIN is free and takes about 10 minutes at irs.gov — sole proprietors can get one too, without changing how you file taxes. Your assistant answers calls the whole time; voice never waits on texting.

What we handle for you

Almost everything carriers actually review is generated by Conduit so it's consistent and compliant by construction: the campaign description, the opt-in explanation (how customers consent to your texts), sample messages, keyword replies (STOP/HELP/START), and your business's own hosted policy pages — a messaging disclosure, an SMS privacy policy, and SMS terms at your own public web address. Before anything is sent to the carriers, we also verify that your live assistant really speaks the texting consent our registration describes, and that every page we reference actually loads.

The few things that are yours

Carriers cross-check everything against your facts, so these are the ones worth a careful minute:

• Legal business name — must match your IRS/EIN paperwork exactly. If customers know you by a different name, that's fine (it's a DBA) — we declare the relationship to the carriers for you, but your website should show both names somewhere.
• Website (optional) — if you give one, reviewers open it. It must load over https, name your business, and not sit behind a login. No website? Leave it blank and we submit your hosted messaging page instead, which passes those checks by design.
• Contact email — an address on your business's own domain reviews best. A gmail/yahoo address can work if that exact address appears somewhere public tied to your business (your site, your Google listing).
• Your industry — carriers prohibit SMS entirely for a few content categories (tobacco/vape, cannabis/CBD, firearms, gambling, loan marketing, and similar). No wording gets around that; if it applies to you, calls still work fully.

After you submit

Nothing else to do. We track it with the carriers automatically (you can see each stage in Settings → Phone & texting), and we tell you the moment it's approved — texting switches on by itself. Reviews typically clear in about a week; busy periods can stretch longer.

If it comes back rejected

Rejections are normal and almost always fixable — the carriers tell us a reason code, and we translate it into plain English in your inbox. The important part: most rejection causes are ours to fix (the wording of things we generate), and we correct and resubmit those automatically — you'll just see the status change. Only a handful land on you, and we say exactly which: your legal name not matching IRS records, your website not naming the business (or needing a login), or a contact email reviewers couldn't tie to you. Fix the named thing in Settings → Phone & texting and resubmit in one tap — editing a rejected registration never costs another vetting fee.

For the full playbook — the error-code families in plain English, what happens automatically, and how to get help — see if your texting registration is rejected.