When texts go out
Sending hours on each person's clock, welcome texts, the 24-hour skip, and how often you said you'd text.
Nobody wants a sale text at 6 in the morning, and the law and some states set hours for marketing texts. TextScaleHQ sends campaigns only in the daytime, on each person’s own clock, and leaves out anyone who just got one. This guide covers sending hours, welcome texts, the 24-hour skip, and how often you’ve told people you’ll text.
Sending hours#
A campaign text reaches someone only between 8 AM and 8 PM. Their time comes from their number’s area code. For a business in the US or Canada, it also has to be 8 AM to 8 PM on the business’s clock, so a New York business’s texts reach Los Angeles numbers from 11 AM to 8 PM New York time. Most rules say 9 PM; we stop at 8 PM, because some states do.
| Their number | When it can arrive |
|---|---|
US or Canada |
8 AM to 8 PM their time, and 8 AM to 8 PM yours. For a business outside the US and Canada, their time only. |
Texas |
9 AM to 8 PM their time, and noon to 8 PM on Sunday. |
An area code across two time zones |
When it’s 8 AM to 8 PM in both. |
Another country |
8 AM to 8 PM in that country, where it has one time zone, and in your business’s. Otherwise your business’s time. |
One we can't place |
8 AM to 8 PM in your business’s time zone. |
The same hours apply to scheduled and recurring campaigns and to AI Promo messages.
Starting a campaign#
A business in the US or Canada can start a campaign from 8 AM until 7:30 PM its own time. Outside that, Send now asks you to schedule it, and the schedule only offers times inside it. A recurring send more than 2 hours late, or one that can’t start before 8 PM, is skipped, not sent at night. It shows as skipped on the series.
Waves and the night#
When the people on a campaign span time zones, it goes out in waves, as each person’s 8 AM comes. Who gets it when in the composer shows the waves before you send. At your business’s 8 PM, a campaign that’s still sending pauses for the night and carries on in the morning. Its page says so. See Who gets it when.
Welcome texts#
- Webform and keyword: straight away, whatever the time, because the person just signed up. A business that gets more than 200 webform sign-ups in an hour holds the rest, and sends them between 8 AM and 8 PM on both clocks, with the Texas hours. Any it can’t send within a day are dropped.
- Integrations: held for daytime where the person is, 9 AM to 8 PM unless you change it, and unless you turn off Hold texts outside the window. You pick whose clock decides; the window can be set anywhere between 8 AM and 8 PM. Strictest window waits until 3 hours after your window opens on Eastern Time (noon with the 9 AM start) and for the window on the person’s own clock. See Welcome text.
HELP and keyword replies go out at once, and so do test texts, which only go to the number you type. We don’t reply to STOP ourselves.
The 24-hour skip#
Every campaign starts with Skip anyone who got a campaign from Harbor Coffee in the 24 hours before it goes out ticked, so nobody gets two in a day. Untick it to reach everyone anyway. It counts campaign texts only: welcome texts, replies and tests don’t count. The sends of one recurring campaign, or of one AI Promo plan, don’t count against each other. AI Promo messages always skip.
When you send now, the count in Who gets it shows how many it leaves out. After a campaign goes out, its page says how many were left out:
How often you said you’d text#
Your webform tells people about how many texts a month to expect: About 2, 4, 6, 8 or 12, under How often you text. That number is in the consent words they tick, in the default welcome text and on your printed signs. Your HELP reply gives its own number, from Texts a month, per person in Messaging Setup: keep the two the same.
Nothing stops you sending more, but people and carriers expect what you said. A sudden jump is also what gets texts reported as spam. So:
- keep your campaigns to about the number your webforms give, or change How often you text to match what you send;
- once a week (about 4 a month, the default) suits most businesses; to text twice a week, set How often you text to About 12 first;
- AI Promo warns you when a plan would text more often than you told people:
