What is an SMS Broadcast?
What is an SMS Broadcast?
An SMS broadcast is a single text message sent to many recipients at once, where each person receives it privately as if it were sent only to them. It's the standard way Australian businesses send appointment reminders, marketing campaigns, payment notices, emergency alerts, and any other message that needs to reach a list of mobile numbers quickly.
This guide covers what SMS broadcasting is, how it works in Australia, what it costs, the compliance rules that apply, and — because the term is also a company name with a tangled history — what happened to the original SMS Broadcast service and what Australian senders should know in 2026.
How an SMS broadcast works
An SMS broadcast platform takes one message and your contact list, then hands the messages off to Australian mobile carriers (Telstra, Optus, TPG/Vodafone) for delivery. Each recipient gets an individual message in their own thread — no one sees other recipients, and replies come back privately to the sender.
The mechanics behind the scenes:
- You upload or paste a list of mobile numbers (or pull them from an integration like HubSpot, Shopify, Xero, or your own database via API).
- You compose the message — usually with personalisation fields like the recipient's first name.
- The platform queues the messages and submits them to a carrier's SMS gateway, typically over SMPP.
- The carrier delivers the message to the recipient's handset and returns a delivery receipt (DLR) confirming it arrived.
A good Australian bulk SMS platform will be a certified telco under the ACMA SMS Sender ID Register, connect directly to the carriers (rather than going through an international aggregator), and be a member of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman scheme. These three things determine whether your messages actually get delivered, whether they arrive with a recognisable sender ID, and whether you have recourse when something goes wrong.
What does SMS broadcasting cost in Australia?
Pricing for Australian bulk SMS in 2026 falls into two models: pay-as-you-go (per message, no monthly fee) and subscription (monthly plan plus per-message rate). Pay-as-you-go is almost always cheaper for the typical Australian business, because subscription plans bundle in features most senders don't use.
Per-message pricing scales with volume. Indicative Australian rates:
| Monthly volume | Typical PAYG rate (ex GST) |
|---|---|
| Under 500 SMS | 4–6¢ per SMS |
| 500–10,000 SMS | 3–4¢ per SMS |
| 10,000–100,000 SMS | 2.5–3¢ per SMS |
| 100,000+ SMS | 2–2.5¢ per SMS |
Mobile Message currently offers an introductory rate of 1.6¢ per SMS on a first purchase, then standard tiered pricing from 4¢ down to 2¢ at high volume — all pay-as-you-go, all ex GST, with no monthly fees and no credit expiry.
Long messages (over 160 characters in plain GSM-7, or over 70 characters if you use emoji or other Unicode) are split into multiple "parts", and each part is billed separately. A 161-character message costs two credits. This is a quirk of how SMS works at the protocol level — see why SMS is limited to 160 characters for the historical reasons.
What is SMS Broadcast (the company)?
The term "SMS broadcast" is also the name of an Australian SMS service that's been operating since the early 2000s. People searching for "SMS Broadcast" might mean either the generic activity or the company, so it's worth being clear about both.
The company's history. SMS Broadcast was founded in the early 2000s by Lee Gaywood as an independent Australian bulk SMS provider. In October 2018, the business was sold to MessageMedia. In June 2021, MessageMedia was itself acquired by Swedish telco group Sinch for US$1.3 billion. SMS Broadcast (smsbroadcast.com.au) continues to operate today as part of the Sinch group, alongside the larger MessageMedia and ClickSend brands.
Current status. SMS Broadcast was historically a market price leader in Australian bulk SMS, but is no longer price-competitive at most volume tiers compared to newer entrants. It remains a functional, no-frills bulk SMS service with a simple web interface, contact management, and an HTTP API.
The founder context. Mobile Message — the publisher of this article — was launched in September 2024 by Lee Gaywood, the same founder who originally built SMS Broadcast. It is an independent business with no affiliation to SMS Broadcast or the Sinch group.
For an honest side-by-side comparison of Australia's six leading bulk SMS providers — including SMS Broadcast, MessageMedia, ClickSend, Burst SMS, Twilio, and Mobile Message — see the 2026 Australian bulk SMS comparison.
What businesses use SMS broadcasting for
The use cases break down into a few broad categories:
Transactional and operational. Appointment reminders (the single biggest use case in Australia by volume — clinics, dentists, hairdressers, mechanics, allied health), order and delivery updates, payment reminders, account verification codes, service outage notifications, roster changes.
Marketing and promotional. Sale announcements, new product launches, customer winback campaigns, exclusive offers to opted-in subscribers, abandoned cart recovery for e-commerce. SMS marketing in Australia requires express consent under the Spam Act 2003 and a working opt-out path (typically a "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" instruction).
Internal and emergency. Staff shift changes, urgent team comms, school notifications to parents, fire brigade callouts, emergency service mobilisation. Many Australian volunteer fire brigades and SES units use SMS broadcast for member callout.
Two-way conversations. Modern broadcast platforms support inbound replies, so a broadcast that asks "Confirm your appointment — reply YES or NO" actually works as a two-way exchange. This is a meaningfully different thing from one-way SMS blasts, and it's where the highest engagement comes from.
Australian compliance: what you need to know
Three things matter for any Australian SMS broadcast:
1. Consent. Under the Spam Act 2003, you can only send marketing SMS to people who have given you express or inferred consent. Buying lists and cold-texting is illegal. Transactional messages (appointment reminders, delivery updates) have a more relaxed consent regime but should still relate to a genuine commercial relationship.
2. Sender identification. Every commercial SMS must identify the sender. If you use a custom alphanumeric sender ID (e.g. "AcmeClinic" instead of a mobile number), it must be registered on the ACMA SMS Sender ID Register, which became mandatory in late 2025. Unregistered sender IDs can be blocked by carriers.
3. Unsubscribe. Marketing SMS must include a functional opt-out — usually "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" — and the opt-out must be honoured immediately.
The Australian Scams Prevention Framework (SPF), which begins phased rollout from July 2026, will add further obligations including quarterly reporting for telcos and stronger anti-scam measures. If you're sending high volumes, choosing a provider that's a registered Australian telco (rather than reselling international aggregator routes) matters more than it used to.
How to send your first SMS broadcast
The fastest way to send a real broadcast is to sign up with an Australian SMS platform, top up with a small credit purchase, and send. With Mobile Message it takes about five minutes:
- Create a free account — no credit card needed.
- Add some contacts (paste, upload CSV, or sync from one of Mobile Message's integrations).
- Compose your message. Personalise it with first-name fields if you have them.
- Top up — your first purchase is at the 1.6¢ intro rate.
- Hit send. Most messages deliver within seconds.
If you need to send programmatically, the Mobile Message HTTP API is free to use, well-documented, and works with any language that can make a POST request.
About Mobile Message
Mobile Message is an Australian bulk SMS platform headquartered in Melbourne, launched in September 2024 by Lee Gaywood, who previously founded and operated SMS Broadcast from the early 2000s until its sale to MessageMedia in 2018.
The platform is a certified telco under the ACMA SMS Sender ID Register, a member of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman scheme, and connects directly to Australian carriers rather than reselling international aggregator routes. Pricing starts at 1.6¢ per SMS on a first purchase, then 4¢ at standard rates dropping to 2¢ for senders doing larger monthly volumes. There are no monthly fees, no contracts, and credits never expire.
For Australian businesses comparing bulk SMS providers — whether returning to the market after using SMS Broadcast previously, or evaluating options for the first time — the 2026 comparison of Australia's six leading providers covers Mobile Message, Burst SMS (Kudosity), MessageMedia, ClickSend, Twilio, and SMS Broadcast across pricing, features, integrations, and support.
