Understanding SMS Credits and Costs
How credits are calculated and deducted, and what happens if your primary SMS provider has an issue.
How costs are calculated
Before sending, Sermfy estimates the SMS segments required and the resulting credit cost for your full recipient list, this appears in the SMS Preview alongside recipient count, sender ID, and schedule, so you can review the real cost before confirming.
When credits are deducted
Credits are only deducted for messages successfully accepted and queued for delivery, not simply for attempting to send, if your credit balance is insufficient for the full broadcast, the broadcast is stopped and you're notified before anything sends.
What happens if delivery fails
Sermfy uses a primary SMS provider for every broadcast, with an automatic whole-broadcast fallback to a secondary provider if the primary fails on the very first send attempt, you don't need to manually retry through a different provider yourself.
Check your SMS Balance card on the Communication Overview page before scheduling a large broadcast, discovering an insufficient balance after your recipients are already expecting a message is worse than catching it beforehand.
Best practice
Purchase credits in advance of predictable high-volume periods (holidays, annual events) rather than reactively, so a time-sensitive broadcast is never blocked by a balance check at the last minute.
Related Articles
Sending Your First SMS Broadcast
How to compose a broadcast, use merge fields to personalize it, choose your recipients, and understand what happens when you hit send.
Requesting and Using a Sender ID
Why you can't register a Sender ID directly, and what the approval process looks like.
Using Merge Fields in a Broadcast
Personalize every message automatically with @@ merge fields, without writing a separate message per recipient.
Scheduling a Broadcast for Later
Send Now vs. Schedule, and what happens to a scheduled broadcast's status along the way.