Skip to main content
SMS credits are prepaid. You buy them in packs, they sit in your workspace wallet, and every phone message you send draws them down. There is no invoice at the end of the month for messages you already sent. One balance pays for three things: SMS, WhatsApp and voice calls. They are charged at different rates, but they all come out of the same pot.

​
Where the wallet lives

Open Settings → Plans & Billing and pick the SMS Credits tab. That screen holds everything on this page: the balance, the pack picker and the transaction history. The current balance also appears in two other places, so you do not have to go looking for it:

On your dashboard

A Low SMS balance alert with a Top up button appears once the balance falls below the low balance mark. It only appears if you have bought at least one pack.

In the SMS composer

The estimate panel shows your wallet balance next to the total credits the campaign will cost, and the shortfall if there is one.

​
Credits are never included in a plan

This catches people out, so it is worth being blunt about it.
No Senderz plan includes SMS credits. Not the smallest one, not the largest one, not Enterprise. Your plan pays for contacts and email sends. Phone messages are a separate, prepaid purchase.
Nothing tops your balance up automatically. Renewing your plan does not add credits. Upgrading a tier does not add credits. If the balance is empty, phone messages stop until you buy a pack.

​
What one credit buys

For SMS, one credit covers up to 268 billable characters per recipient. Every recipient costs at least one credit. Past 268 characters it becomes two credits, past 536 three, and so on. Shortened links and the unsubscribe line count toward those 268 characters, because they are added to the message before the credits are counted.
Hebrew and Latin cost the same in credits. A 268 character Hebrew message and a 268 character English message are both one credit.Where the two differ is in carrier parts, the pieces the phone network splits a long message into. Latin text fits 160 characters in one part. Hebrew, emoji and any other non-Latin character drop that to 70. The composer shows carrier parts so you can see how the message arrives on the handset, but they do not each cost a credit.
The full character and encoding rules, with worked examples, are on the SMS channel page.

​
What else draws on the same balance

Voice is counted differently and it is the expensive one. Because voice is charged by carrier part, a short Hebrew voice message costs roughly four times what the same text costs as an SMS. Budget for voice separately. See Voice.

​
What Senderz pays for

The login and two-factor codes sent to you and your team are a platform cost. They never touch your wallet. Every message you send to a contact is billed to you, test sends included.

​
Buying credits

1

Open the SMS Credits tab

Settings → Plans & Billing → SMS Credits.
2

Pick a pack size

Packs come in 500, 2,500, 10,000 and 50,000 credits. Each one is a single purchase, not a subscription. The selected pack card shows the price and the per credit rate.
3

Confirm

Buy credits opens a confirmation dialog, then hands you to your billing provider’s checkout. The price in the dialog is approximate. The final amount is the one you confirm at checkout.
4

Credits arrive

Once the payment clears, the credits are added to the balance and a Credit pack purchase row appears in the transaction history.
Credits do not expire. Anything you do not use this month is still there next month.

​
Where checkout takes you

This depends on how your workspace is billed, and Senderz decides it for you on every purchase. You never get a choice, and you never get the wrong one.
Checkout opens with the Senderz payment provider, the same one that bills your plan. You pay by card there.
If a pack is not configured for your billing provider, the purchase is refused with a clear message rather than half completing.

​
Reading the transaction history

The wallet card lists the most recent entries. All transactions opens the full list. Every row shows the amount, the balance immediately after it, and when it happened. The log is append only. Nothing is ever edited or removed, so it is the record to check if a balance is not what you expected.

​
How the balance moves during a send

Understanding this explains most surprises in the history.
1

Credits are reserved before the message is handed over

When a send is authorised, the credits come off the balance straight away and an SMS sends row is written. This happens before the carrier is contacted, so the balance can drop a moment before anything actually goes out.
2

The reservation is held for five minutes

A reservation that is not settled within five minutes is swept up automatically. If the message was genuinely sent, the reservation is finalised. If it was not, the credits are returned.
3

Delivery to the carrier finalises the charge

Once the carrier accepts the message, the reservation is committed and the credits are spent for good.
4

A failure returns the credits

If the carrier rejects the message, or the connection fails, the reservation is released and a Refund row is written for the same amount.
The balance can never go negative. If two sends race for the last few credits, one of them is declined rather than overdrawing the wallet. A declined send costs nothing.

​
When a message is uncertain

If the connection drops after Senderz has handed the message over, Senderz cannot tell whether it went out. It returns your credits, marks the message failed, and does not retry. You are never charged twice for one uncertain message, and one uncertain message is better than two real ones to the same person.

​
When the balance runs low or runs out

The low balance mark is 100 credits. It is fixed and cannot be changed.
This is a hard block, not a warning. The campaign builder shows Your SMS credit balance is too low to send campaigns with a Buy credits button, and the send control stays disabled until you top up. It applies at 99 credits, not only at zero.
Even above 100 credits, the SMS composer blocks the send if the estimated total is more than your balance. It tells you exactly how many more credits you need for that campaign.
The remaining recipients are skipped, not queued for later. The campaign is marked failed and reports Not enough SMS credits. Recipients who already received the message are unaffected. Top up, then send again.
That recipient’s message step is skipped and the automation carries on. The automation is not paused or stopped. Contacts who reach that step while the balance is empty simply do not get the message, and there is no retry once you top up.
The wallet card shows a Low balance or Zero balance badge, and the dashboard shows a Low SMS balance alert. No email is sent. Check the balance before a large SMS campaign rather than relying on being told.

​
Refunds and non-refundable credits

Two different things share the word refund, so keep them apart.

Credits returned for a failed send

Automatic, immediate, and shown as a Refund row in the history. Nothing to request. A skipped or rejected message never ends up costing you credits.

Money back for a pack you bought

Credits are prepaid and non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Buy the pack size you expect to use.

​
Limits worth knowing

  • There is no automatic top up. The balance is never recharged for you.
  • The low balance mark is 100 credits and is not editable.
  • All transactions shows the most recent entries, not an unlimited scroll back through history.
  • One wallet per workspace. Credits are not shared between workspaces and cannot be moved between them.

SMS

Character counting, carrier parts, the unsubscribe line and everything that affects what a message costs.

WhatsApp

The flat 3 credit charge and how WhatsApp opt-in works.

Voice

Why voice is charged per carrier part and what that means for Hebrew.

SMS Sender names

An approved Sender name is checked before any credits are reserved.