# SMS segments: why one emoji doubles the cost An SMS isn't priced per message, it's priced per segment. In this video we send the same text twice from the terminal, add one emoji the second time, and watch the response flip from one segment to two. Same words, same recipient, double the charge. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBpUWuc31fA (4:33) ## What we cover - How GSM-7 and Unicode change what fits in one segment - Why one emoji can double a message's segment count - Checking a message's segment count before you send ## Transcript _Auto-generated from the video._ Hey and welcome back to another video. Today we're going to be talking about SMS segments. Now you might be wondering what is an SMS segment? It's basically a piece of your SMS message. So when you're sending out text messages, these get sent over in individual segments and you actually get billed per individual segment. Now why is it important? If you don't truly understand how segments work and how they're calculated, you might end up sending a message which contains multiple segments and is therefore costing you multiple messages. Now in order to prevent that, let me just quickly walk you through it. So when you type out a message, you have up to 160 characters if you're just using plain text. This is a rule of thumb within the entire SMS business and is something that's set by the local networks. Now in the event that you decide to extend your message, it will be split up into multiple segments because you're exceeding the 160 character limit. While there are multiple segments, they will be delivered as a single message. However, you will be priced per segment. It's also good to note that a segment can then only hold 153 characters. Now let's say I add an emoji. When adding an emoji, you're actually landing in an in completely different character set. This specific character set only holds 70 characters per segment and therefore your segment becomes much smaller. Now what does this mean? This actually means that if you send out a text message that includes an emoji and while it might be shorter than a non-emoji message, because of this segment setup, it will actually be considerably more expensive. Let's have a look at how this will work in practice. What I've got here is I've got two messages that are ready to be sent out to my customers at the moment that their order got shipped. The first one is just plain text. So, this will fall within the 160 characters. In this specific event, I've got 150 characters that we're going to be sending, aka just one SMS. Now, we also have a shorter message. This one only contains around 110 characters, but it has a special emoji. Now, like we just shared, the emojis fall outside of the basic Unicode uh type script or the type form. Um and thus the entire message needs to be formatted differently, and it will be sent in chunks of 70 characters. Now, while this message is just indeed below the 160, because of this emoji, it will be submitted into two different, and therefore this message will be uh twice as expensive as the longer message without the emoji. Now, let me open up terminal, and then I've got two messages ready. So, I'm going to send the first one, which is accepted and is now sent. So, this is the first message with plain text, as you can see here. And then we've got the second one, where we've included the emoji, which is sent here now as well. Now, here we can already immediately see that this was sent into two different segments, whereas here we've only had a single segment. We can see that encoding here, so here we can see indeed see that plain text was sent in the GSM uh 7-bit format, whereas the USC2 uh UCS2 um encoding was needed to send the message with the emoji. Now, going into our messages, we can actually see this back here as well. So, if we open up our details page, we can see that the price of our single message was 8.3 cents. And if we go to the message with emoji, we can actually see that it doubled at .16. So, 16 cents for this entire message. So, make sure to make use of this. Um emojis can add a huge value to your customers, to the experience, but it will also potentially harm your cost. If you stay within that 70 characters, it will still be a single message. Um but it's important to keep note of that. Now, if you've got any further questions, our support team is always ready to assist. Have a look at our documentations if you want to learn more. And for now, as always, I'd like to say happy sending. ## More SMS guides - [Sending your first SMS](/de-de/learn/sms/sms-first-send) — 2:17 - [Sending an SMS with a template](/de-de/learn/sms/sms-templates) — 3:20 - [Registering your SMS sender ID](/de-de/learn/sms/sms-sender-id) — 4:39 - [Control where your account can send](/de-de/learn/sms/sms-destinations) — 2:31 - [SMS pumping explained](/de-de/learn/sms/sms-pumping) — 2:11 ## Resources - [Documentation](/de-de/dokumentation) - [Learn more about SMS](/de-de/produkte/sms)