Introducing MMS Support on Toll-Free Numbers in the US and Canada

You can now send and receive multimedia messages using Plivo on toll-free phone numbers in the US and Canada.

If you’re already utilizing toll-free numbers, this extended capability streamlines your customer service by letting you use the same number for all three channels: voice, SMS, and MMS. You can now offer a better, more consistent user experience for your customers. Toll-free numbers also provide a higher messaging throughput rate — resulting in increased delivery speed — and are cost-effective for businesses to provision and maintain.

We recommend adding multimedia messaging to your engagement strategy if you haven’t done so already. Multimedia messaging helps you create a unique, personalized, and consistent experience for customers. MMS messaging also boosts the total character count for messages from 160 to 1,600, giving you ample room to convey your message effectively. You can send an image, a slideshow of multiple images, animated GIFs, audio, and up to 40 seconds of video.

With Plivo, you can leverage:

• Message queuing: As a safeguard to keep you within carrier regulations and guidelines, Plivo automatically queues your concurrent outbound messages for delivery in the order they were received.
• Built-in multimedia storage: Plivo provides built-in unlimited multimedia storage for both inbound and outbound MMS messages, so you can find and reuse your multimedia easily.
• Support for a variety of formats: Send JPEGs, GIFs, emojis, audio (MP3), and video (MP4) for a rich multimedia experience.

How much does it cost?

Like all of Plivo’s pricing models, you pay only for what you use, and there’s no upfront commitment to get started.

How do I get started?

To buy an SMS- or MMS-enabled toll-free number, go to Phone Numbers in the Plivo console, then click on Buy Number. Tick Toll-Free as the number type, and check-mark SMS and/or MMS as the capability. Not every toll-free number is enabled for SMS or MMS messaging, but you can have Plivo enable yours.

Once you’ve acquired a toll-free number that can send and receive MMS messages, you can upload multimedia directly to our system and start sending messages instantly. We also take care of the media hosting, if you need that.

Want to learn more? Read our detailed use case guide for sending MMS messages for step-by-step information. Not using Plivo yet? Getting started takes just five minutes. Sign up today!