What you need before you start
- Mobile numbers of people who expect to hear from you. Customers, members, parents or staff who gave you their number. Any Sri Lankan mobile on Dialog, SLT-Mobitel, Hutch or Airtel works.
- A message. One part holds 160 characters in English or 70 in Sinhala or Tamil.
- Credit. Messages cost Rs. 0.60 to Rs. 0.79 per part depending on your monthly volume, and the minimum top-up is Rs. 100. See bulk SMS pricing.
Step 1: Create your account
Go to Create account and enter your business name, email address and mobile number. There is no setup fee and no monthly fee, so an account costs nothing until you send.
Step 2: Request a sender ID
A sender ID is the name your message arrives from, such as MYSHOP, instead of a phone number. In the portal open Sender IDs, enter a name of 3 to 11 characters and say what you will send. Then download the authorisation letter, put it on your company letterhead, sign it and upload a scan or a clear photo. Most requests are approved within one working day. The SMS sender ID page explains how to choose a good one.
Step 3: Add credit
Open Billing & top-up, choose an amount and pay by bank transfer or cash deposit to the account shown there. Upload a photo of the slip and your balance is updated as soon as the payment is confirmed. Credit never expires, and larger packages carry bonus credit.
Step 4: Prepare your numbers
You can paste numbers straight into the send page, upload a CSV file, or save them as a contact group to use again. The format does not matter: 0771234567, 771234567, 94771234567 and +94771234567 are all accepted. Duplicates and numbers on your block list are removed before the cost is calculated, so you never pay twice for one person.
Step 5: Write the message
Say who you are, say the one thing the customer needs to know, and stop. The composer counts characters and parts as you type and switches to Unicode automatically when you write in Sinhala or Tamil. You can check a message before you log in with the SMS character counter, and there are ready-made examples in SMS templates for Sri Lankan businesses.
Step 6: Preview, then send or schedule
The preview shows the number of recipients, the parts per message and the total cost in rupees. Send it now, or pick a date and time in Sri Lanka time. A scheduled campaign can be cancelled before it goes out, and the credit returns to your balance.
Step 7: Check the delivery report
Open the campaign to see a status for every number: sent, delivered or failed. Messages the network refuses are refunded automatically, and one click resends the campaign to only the numbers that failed. SMS delivery reports explained covers what each status means.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Sending to people who never gave you their number. They ignore the message and complain about it.
- Going over one part by a few characters. A 165-character English message costs twice as much as a 160-character one.
- Pasting text from a document. Curly quotes and long dashes turn an English message into Unicode, which cuts the limit to 70 characters.
- Forgetting to say who you are. Without your name in the sender ID or the first words, the message looks like spam.
- Sending late at night. Schedule the campaign for a time when people can act on it.
When you are ready for more, the bulk SMS overview lists everything the portal can do, and developers can send the same messages from code with the SMS gateway API.