Send an SMS from Responses

You can SMS any respondent with a valid phone number from Responses. Three key things to keep in mind:

Character limit & older phones - you can send fairly long text messages to most newer phones, but certain carriers and older devices will split up messages over 160 characters into multiple messages.
If you're testing it out via preview, make sure you haven't opted out of SMS from Ethnio (see below)
International numbers outside of the US have ~70% chance of working because every carrier has unique properties around the world

SMS Preview Opt In

If you're trying to test out the SMS and send it to yourself, and receive an error, the most likely cause is that you've opted out of another SMS service from Twilio, our provider. Luckily it's an easy fix:

Text START to +14153902261

Twilio powers everything from Uber to political campaign texts, and usually opt outs via SMS remain per service, but sometimes they can honor your opt out across their entire network, even if you've never received a text from Ethnio. This is fairly rare but a small percentage of your participants could also not receive SMS reminders for the same reason. In our experience it's <2% of participants.

SMS Replies

If anyone replies to an SMS that Ethnio sends, they will not receive any response. More info: https://help.ethn.io/article/564-sms-replies