Sending a document by text: what it actually takes

Texting somebody a link to sign is the single biggest improvement most operators can make to how many documents come back signed. It is also the channel with the most rules around it, and the gap between "we should text people" and "we can text people" is larger than it looks.

Here is the whole of it, including the parts that take weeks.

First: does a document signed from a text count

The link is just delivery. What matters legally is what happened on the page the link opened — whether the person was shown the document, agreed to sign electronically, and meant to sign. A signature reached by text is no different in kind from one reached by email, and both are covered by the same framework we set out in the ESIGN Act and UETA.

Where text is different is in the second question: whether you were allowed to send the message at all. That one has nothing to do with signature law and everything to do with telecoms rules.

Consent, which is the whole game

In the United States the TCPA governs texting people, and the enforcement history is expensive enough that the industry treats it seriously.

What matters in practice:

• Consent is per purpose. Agreeing to receive a document is not agreeing to
• receive a reminder, and neither is agreeing to marketing. These are separate
• permissions, and treating one checkbox as covering all three is the most
• common mistake.
• The exact wording is the evidence. Not "they opted in" — the specific
• sentence they agreed to, stored with the record. If you cannot produce the
• words, you cannot show what they agreed to.
• Where you obtained it matters. A number typed by the person on your form
• is not the same as one written down at a counter, which is not the same as
• one from a list you bought. The third is not consent.
• STOP has to work, immediately and permanently, and HELP has to answer.
• These are not optional courtesies; they are requirements, and carriers test
• them.

SignSealer will not send to a number without a consent record naming the purpose, the source and the wording — the message is marked suppressed and the reason is recorded. That is deliberate, and it is occasionally inconvenient, which is the point.

Then: the carrier registration nobody mentions

This is the part that surprises people. In the United States you cannot simply start sending application-to-person texts. Traffic goes through a registration regime, and unregistered traffic is filtered or blocked outright.

10DLC is the route for a standard long code. You register a brand — your legal business identity, with your EIN — and then a campaign describing what you will send, for what use case, and how people opt in. The campaign submission wants the opt-in wording and, frequently, a screenshot of the form where consent is taken.

Toll-free verification is the parallel route for a toll-free number, with a similar submission.

Two things to plan around. It takes time — days to weeks, and a rejection restarts the clock. And the submission is checked against your live pages, so the wording on the form, the wording in your policy page, and the wording in the screenshot all have to be the same wording. Reviewers do compare them, and a mismatch is a rejection.

That is the practical reason to have the consent sentence come from one place in your system rather than being retyped into three.

Segments, and why messages cost what they do

Texts bill per segment, not per message. A GSM-7 message is 160 characters, but a concatenated one drops to 153 per segment because of the header. One emoji, one curly quote or one accented character switches the whole message to UCS-2, and the limits fall to 70 and 67.

So a 150-character message is one segment, and the same message with a smart apostrophe is three. Keeping the link short and the text plain is a cost decision as much as a style one.

What a good signing text looks like

Short, identified, and obviously not spam:

• Say who it is from in the first few words. An unidentified link is not
• opened.
• Say what it is. "Your rental agreement", not "your document".
• One link, and no other link.
• One reminder at most, and only if they have not signed.
• Reply STOP to stop, on every message.

Whether it is worth it

For consumer bookings, yes, and it is not close — a text is read within minutes and a confirmation email is archived unread. For business-to-business, email is usually fine and the registration overhead is hard to justify.

The honest summary: if the people signing are consumers on their phones, text is the channel, and the several weeks of registration is the price of admission. Our text message policy sets out what we send, and what HELP and STOP do.

SignSealer is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. The TCPA and the carrier registration rules are detailed and they change; what your own consent language needs to say is a question for a lawyer.