Sending your first business SMS, step by step: activate, buy credits, write and send

The short answer: it takes four steps, all on the SMS page in My MozOut: activate the service, buy credits (from 1,000), write the message and pick the numbers. Before anything goes out, the page shows how many credits the send will use and asks you to confirm. After that, you follow everything in the History.

What you need first

1	Access to My MozOut, with your company's account.

2	The numbers you are sending to: mobile phones in Mozambique and Angola. You can type them, paste them or save them in Contacts first.

3	A way to pay for the credits: the same payment methods as your other services.

Step by step

The SMS page menu has Home, Send, Contacts, Templates, Senders, History and Credits. Your first send uses most of them:

1	Activate the service. Open the SMS page in My MozOut and switch it on. The free NETMSG sender is ready straight away.

2	Buy credits. Under Credits, type how many you want, from 1,000. The purchase goes through the payment page, where the invoice is created. Once paid, the credits reach your SMS balance. How the price works: SMS credits and price tiers.

3	Write the message. Under Send, start from a ready-made template, ask the AI for a draft or write your own. The limit is 1,600 characters. If you use a template, fill in the parts in square brackets, such as [DATE]: while one is left empty, sending is blocked.

4	Choose who it goes to. Type a number, paste a whole list of numbers at once or pick a group from your contacts. Choose the sender too: NETMSG or one of your approved Sender IDs.

5	Check the cost and confirm. The page shows how many parts the message has and how many credits it will use. Send now or set a date and time; a confirmation window appears before the message goes out.

6	Follow it in the History. You see the date, the recipient, the message, the cost and the status of each send.

How to write the numbers

Write the numbers with or without the country code, because the system can tell the country from the first digit: 841234567 goes to Mozambique and 923456789 to Angola. So +258 84 123 4567 and 258841234567 are the same number as 841234567. You can paste a whole list in one go, for example copied from a spreadsheet. If you send to the same people often, it is worth saving them in Contacts and sorting them into groups: see SMS contacts and groups.

What each status means

Status	What it means
In queue	Waiting to go out.
Sent	Handed to the mobile operator. It does not mean it has been read.
Failed	It did not go out. The credits go back to your balance.

The other statuses, the filters and what happens when a message fails are in SMS history and scheduling.

Send the first one to your own phone. You see how it arrives, which sender it shows and how many parts it used, before it goes to hundreds of customers.

Message refused? Some words are not allowed, and a message that contains them will not go out. Each account also has a daily sending limit. And remember: the sender cannot receive replies, so say in the message how the customer can reach you.

Ready for your first send? See the credit prices and activate SMS in My MozOut.

See SMS prices

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