You will not get caught out by the Spam Act
Australian SMS is regulated, the obligations sit with the sender, and most of the ways people get caught are avoidable.
Consent has to be real
The Spam Act 2003 requires consent before you send a commercial message. It can be express, or inferred from an existing relationship, but you have to be able to show which, and when.
Every commercial message needs a way out
An unsubscribe facility is mandatory, it has to work for at least 30 days, and it has to be honoured. Every message we send can carry an opt-out: a reply of STOP, or a link for messages sent from a name that cannot receive replies.
Opt-outs are recorded for you
When someone opts out it is recorded against your account and they are excluded from future sends automatically. This is the obligation people most often fail by accident, because it depends on someone remembering to update a list.
Sender IDs have to be registered
Australian sender IDs have to be registered. An unregistered one is replaced with the word Unverified and threaded in with other unregistered senders. We lodge the registration for you and show you the status of yours.
You have to identify yourself
A commercial message must make clear who sent it, and give contact details that stay valid for at least 30 days. Sending from your business name is the simplest way to satisfy the first part. It does not, by itself, satisfy the second.
One last thing
This page is general information about the obligations that apply to commercial SMS in Australia, not legal advice for your situation.
The registration side of it
Getting your sender ID registered
What the register asks for, and what we lodge on your behalf.
Read moreCommonly asked
Does this apply to appointment reminders?
A purely factual message may fall outside the commercial-message rules, but the line is not always obvious. The safe position is to treat consent and opt-out as applying, which is what the platform does by default.
Who is responsible if we get it wrong?
The sender is. We give you the tools that make compliance the default, but the obligation to have consent sits with you.