ISV US A2P 10DLC Starter Registration Overview

Twilio offers a light-weight Starter Brand A2P 10DLC registration experience for low-volume customers of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

This guide provides an overview for ISVs who want to register their customers for A2P 10DLC messaging capabilities as Starter Brands. It also covers the many benefits of making use of this registration tier. We’ll show how Starter Brands compare to Standard Brands, and how to determine which tier is best for individual customers’ use cases.

We also have a step-by-step guide to onboard your customers as Starter Brands using the Starter APIs.

Let’s get started!

How to determine the registration tier for your customers

You’ve already registered your ISV business for A2P 10DLC and now it’s time to register your customers. Twilio offers two options for registering your customers for A2P messaging: Starter Brand and Standard Brand registration. To determine which of these is best for a given customer, you will primarily consider their current and expected messaging traffic volume.

That said, your customer ecosystem is dynamic and not all customers will have the same messaging needs or messaging volume. Let’s take a look at the decision tree you’ll use to determine the registration tier for your customers:

Example scenario

Consider the scenario above. You have completed the brand registration for your company and now have three customers for which you need to complete brand registrations: ISV Customers 1, 2, and 3.

First, see how many daily US messages are sent by each customer to their end-users:

• Customer 1 sends more than 3,000 US messages per day and has 6 or more (up to 400) numbers per Messaging Service.
• Customers 2 and 3 send fewer than 3,000 US messages per day and has five or less phone numbers per Messaging Service.

Customer 1’s messaging volume surpasses what is avaliable to a Starter Brand. You should register them as a Standard Brand to accommodate for their higher messaging traffic.

Customers 2 and 3, however, have messaging volumes that are low enough that we recommed you register them as Starter Brands — the “No” path on the diagram above.

What does that mean for Customer 2 and Customer 3? A whole lot!

Starter Brand benefits

The Starter Brand tier has a simplified verification process which requires less vetting. To create a Starter Customer Profile you will only need to provide your customers'

• Full name (first and last).
• Email address.
• Billing address.
• SMS-capable phone number

Twilio will cover all Brand and Campaign registration fees, effectively making the Starter Brand registration tier free. Additionally, Starter Brands are allowed one Campaign that can have five or less 10-digit long code numbers and supports Mixed Campaign use cases.

Here, at a glance, are the Starter Brand specifications:

The simplified registration process and reduced costs of the Starter Brand tier will allow your low-volume customers to focus on building awesome things for their end-users.

Registering your Customer as a Starter Brand with the Trust Hub

As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) you can register your customers as Starter Brands via the TrustHub in the Twilio Console. In the console you will:

1. Create your customer’s Starter Business Profile to represent their business.
2. Review A2P registration limits for Starter Business Profiles.
3. Register a Starter Campaign Use Case and link it to a Messaging Service.

1. Create a Starter Business Profile

To create a Starter Business Profile, you will need to provide information about them and their business. Start by selecting "Starter profile" as the profile type. Note that Starter profiles are recommended for customers sending less than 3,000 messages per day.

Next you will need to provide information about your customer to complete their Starter Business profile. For Contact Information, you will provide your customer’s:

• Business Name
• First and Last Name
• Email Address
• Country Code
• SMS-capable phone number

Don’t forget to save! Then continue on to "Business Address".

You may enter a new address for your customer or you can Select from an existing address already listed. If entering a new address you will need to provide your customer’s:

• Country
• City
• Street address
• City
• State/Province/Region
• Postal Code

Once you’ve confirmed that the information provided is accurate, click Submit for review to submit your customer’s Starter Business Profile for review.

2. Review A2P registration limits for Starter Brands

Next, review the A2P registration limits associated with Starter Business Profiles. Since you are registering your customer with a Starter Business Profile, you will not need to pay A2P brand registration fees. Revisit the Starter Brand Benefits section of this guide for a refresher on the limits of this tier.

Click Continue when you’re done.

3. Register a Starter Campaign Use Case

Finally, you will create a Messaging Service for your customer and then link it to a campaign use case. As noted earlier, Starter Brands support a Mixed campaign use-case.

After selecting Create a new Messaging Service, you will see the screen below. Create a Messaging Service by providing a "Friendly Name" for it and select what you will be using the Messaging Service for.

When you’ve finished creating your Messaging Service, hit the Save and continue button!

Next, you will add phone numbers to the Sender Pool of the Messaging Service you’ve just created. If you already have available numbers (unattached to other Messaging Services) you can select them under Numbers Available for association.

If you do not have any available numbers, click the link to Buy a new number, which will take you to the Phone Numbers section of the Twilio Console to purchase one. Once you have purchased a phone number, you can return to the Trust Hub and reload the page.

After hitting Save and continue, you will then confirm campaign use case creation. Confirm and don’t forget to click the Register campaign use case button at the end!

Once your Campaign use case registration is approved, you will see an on-screen message indicating that your registration flow is complete.

You can also view all of your registered US A2P brands, or register another customer.

When to register your customers as a Standard Brand

You may find that you have customers who send more than 3,000 US SMS and MMS messages per day, like Customer 1 in our earlier example. Additionally, you may also have customers currently registered to the Starter tier who would like to unlock higher daily messaging limits. In these scenarios you can register, or re-register, your customers using the Standard Brand tier when they are ready to scale.

The Standard Brand tier is the most suitable option for those of your customers who intend to send a large number of US messages per day, and anticipate needing a high messaging volume to do so. Unlike Starter Brand registration, there are several fees associated with Standard Brand registration. However, Standard Brand customers benefit from a substantially increased message volume, throughput, and phone number allotment.

Here’s how the two tiers compare:

When your Starter Brand customers are ready to make the leap to higher messaging volume, increased throughput, and phone number limits, please see the ISV Onboarding guide for an outline of the Standard Brand registration process.

What’s next?

To register your customers via API head over to the Starter Brand step-by-step API walkthrough to begin the A2P 10DLC Starter Brand registration process!