Church Admin Plugin

Send SMS

⭐ Premium

The Send SMS screen lets you compose and send a text message to any filtered group of people in your directory. SMS is useful for urgent or short communications where you need people to see the message quickly — service changes, last-minute announcements, or a pastoral check-in to a specific group.

Go to Church Admin → Communications → Send SMS.

Before you start

SMS sending requires Twilio to be configured in Church Admin → Communications → SMS settings. If you haven’t set this up yet, see SMS settings. Your Twilio account also needs sufficient credit before sending — check your balance at console.twilio.com.

Mobile numbers in your directory also need to be in e164 format before SMS can be delivered. Run Church Admin → People → Check for directory issues to convert them in bulk if you haven’t already. See e164 phone number format.

Step 1 — Choose recipients

The top of the screen shows the people filter — the same filter used throughout the directory. Tick the member types, people types, small groups, ministries, or sites you want to include.

Only people with a valid mobile number stored in e164 format will receive the SMS — anyone without an e164 number is excluded automatically. The screen reports how many people in the filtered group have a valid mobile number before you send.

See Address list filtering for the full filter options.

Step 2 — Compose the message

Message

Type your message in the text area. SMS messages are plain text only — no HTML formatting, images, or links with special characters. Keep messages concise: a standard SMS is 160 characters. Messages longer than 160 characters are sent as concatenated SMS — multiple messages joined together — which costs more and may not display correctly on all handsets.

A character counter shows how many characters you’ve used and how many SMS segments the message will require. Each additional segment beyond the first increases the Twilio cost proportionally.

Available shortcodes

The following shortcodes are replaced individually for each recipient when the SMS is sent:

  • [FIRSTNAME] — the recipient’s first name
  • [LASTNAME] — the recipient’s last name
  • [NAME] — the recipient’s full name

Be mindful of character count when using name shortcodes — a long name could push a message over 160 characters for some recipients.

Step 3 — Send

Click Send SMS. The screen shows how many messages are being sent and confirms when the send is complete. Each message is sent individually via Twilio — one per recipient — so costs are per person receiving the message.

Opt-out handling

If a recipient replies STOP to any SMS from your Twilio number, Twilio automatically adds them to a blocklist and will not deliver further messages to that number — even if you send to them again through Church Admin. This is a Twilio-level safeguard that cannot be overridden. If someone asks to be removed from SMS communications, their preference should also be updated in their directory record.

If no recipients are found

If the screen reports zero recipients after applying your filter, the most likely causes are:

  • No one in the filtered group has a mobile number stored in the directory
  • Mobile numbers are stored but haven’t been converted to e164 format yet — run the directory issues checker to fix this. See Check for directory issues.
  • The filter selection returned no matching people — check the filter and try broadening it

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