Upgrading from a Starter Brand to Standard Brand

Twilio offers a Starter Brand A2P 10DLC registration experience for low-volume customers of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Because of its simpler process, many ISVs start off their US A2P journey by registering Starter Brands for their customers.

However, Starter Brands do come with significantly more limitations on message volume, throughput, and phone number allotment than Standard Brands. As a result, when ISV customers experience growing messaging needs that surpass these limits, they see a need to upgrade from Starter to Standard.

This guide will provide an overview of this process. Let’s get started!

What does the "upgrade" process look like?

For customers who already have a Starter Brand, there actually isn't a process to directly upgrade that brand into a Standard Brand. Instead, what you will do is register for a separate Standard Brand, in addition to the Starter Brand you already have. Before we move on, please check out the following documents which provide a detailed walkthrough of how to register for a Standard Brand and campaign:

• ISV Standard Registration Overview
• ISV US A2P 10DLC Standard Registration: API Walkthrough

In general, there are two options you can take and each comes with its own pros and cons. The key decision point is whether you choose to use the existing Messaging Service that is associated with your Starter campaign to register with the new Standard campaign, or to use a new Messaging Service. Below is an overview of these two upgrade options described in more detail:

Overview of upgrade options

In the following sections we'll be going through the two upgrade options above via the Twilio console in further detail. Note, if you are looking to upgrade your brand via the API, you can use the ISV Standard API to perform the same actions described below. Please refer to ISV US A2P 10DLC Standard Registration: API Walkthrough for more details.

Option 1: Use an Existing Messaging Service

Step 1: Create a new Standard Secondary Profile and new Standard Brand

Navigate to A2P Messaging in the TrustHub, located in the Twilio console and start registration. Select "Standard secondary profile" in the menu.

Step 2: Register a US A2P Brand

After the business profile creation is complete, please go on to register a Standard US A2P Brand and click Continue.

Step 3: Set Up a Messaging Service

Choose "Use Existing Messaging Service", and find the Messaging Service that is currently connected to your Starter campaign.

Select Continue to disconnect this Messaging Service from the existing Starter campaign.

By selecting "Confirm", your existing Messaging Service is now registered with the Standard campaign. The opt-out and sticky sender features will be preserved, and the existing phone numbers in the Messaging Service will be automatically moved to the new campaign as well.

Please note that campaign registration may take several minutes to finish. In the meantime, your traffic going out from this Messaging Service will temporarily happen on the P2P route where the higher carrier fees may apply.

Option 2: Use a new Messaging Service

Prerequisites

The first two steps of option 2 are the same as option 1. Feel free to follow the instructions fo steps 1 and 2 above to create a secondary Standard A2P profile and Standard Brand, and come back to this section to begin step 3.

Step 3: Create a new Messaging Service

Be sure to give your Messaging Service an intuitive name!

Step 4: Add senders

Next, add senders to your Messaging Service. If you choose to use existing phone numbers that already belong to other campaigns, you may experience some service disruption as we try to move them to the new campaign. Thus, we encourage you to use some new senders in this step. Once this new campaign is set up, you can always go to the Messaging Services page to move your existing senders over. When you do this, please make sure you add all your numbers to this Messaging Service.

The disadvantage of option 2 is, by using a new messaging service, the old opt-out and sticky sender settings that exist with your old messaging service will not be carried over.

Step 5: Delete Starter campaign

Once your new Standard campaign is all set up, please navigate to your old Messaging Service's configuration page, and locate the A2P & Compliance tab. This ensures that you stay compliant with the carrier policies. You can find the "Unregister" button on the bottom right corner to delete your Starter campaign. When you do this, be sure you move all your numbers to the new Messaging Service you've just created.

What’s next?

Congratulations! 🎉 You now have registered a standard A2P campaign! You can now enjoy increased message volume, throughput, and phone number allotment for your messaging traffic to the U.S. To see details of your new limits, please visit Trust Hub in the console.