Plan a bulk SMS budget from the audience you intend to contact, the sending identity you will use, and the price shown in your Momo Business workspace. A public price remembered from an earlier campaign may not match your current channel, account configuration or currency.
The calculations below use an invented price for illustration. They are not a Momo tariff, a provider quote or a statement of current Tanzanian SMS prices.
Gather the inputs before approving a send
You need access to the campaign form, the intended contact group and, where permitted, Billing. Ask a colleague with billing access to verify spendable funds if those controls are unavailable to your role.
First define the campaign's purpose and audience. Remove duplicate entries and contacts who should not receive the message. Review applicable blocking controls, and remember that an unchecked subscription box does not automatically exclude a contact from messaging campaigns.
Record the following together: group name and count, sending identity, quoted currency, displayed estimate, planned number of runs, and who may authorize a correction or additional send. If two teams share the wallet, account for their planned activity as well.
Use the campaign estimate correctly
- Open the campaign creation form without submitting it.
- Select the intended SMS Sending identity and Contact Group. The chosen identity determines which configured channel price the form displays.
- Enter the final wording, including representative personalization. Confirm the recipient count beside Estimated cost.
- Read the estimate's currency and the wallet balance's currency separately. Do not compare raw numbers as though different currencies were interchangeable.
- For recurrence, calculate the planned series as well as one round. Review Max runs, the next run and any end condition.
- Check available funds and reservations in Billing before you select Create Campaign. A one-time campaign without a future schedule begins processing immediately.
The current form estimates contact count multiplied by the selected channel's unit price. It is a planning figure, not a delivery promise or a complete analysis of message encoding. Blocking, changes to the group and dispatch outcomes can make the final figures differ.
Understand length and SMS segments
An SMS can occupy several network segments even when a phone presents it as one message. Common limits are 160 GSM-7 units for one segment, or 153 per segment when concatenated; UCS-2 messages commonly allow 70 units for one segment and 67 when concatenated. Some symbols consume extra units, and emoji or other characters can change encoding. Twilio's SMS length documentation explains these encoding limits.
Count the final personalized text, not just the template with short placeholders. Test long names and locations, and inspect provider-reported segments when available. A character counter alone is not a guarantee of the network segment count.
Momo records segment information returned by the provider, but the current campaign estimate and settlement use the configured unit price per dispatched message. Do not multiply Momo's displayed estimate by a guessed segment count or assume a provider's segment tariff is your workspace tariff. Confirm the applicable arrangement if message length could materially change your budget.
Worked example with a hypothetical price
Suppose a fictional business plans to contact 800 recipients and the illustrative configured price is TZS 20 per dispatched message. Its planning calculation is:
| Item | Hypothetical calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| One round | 800 × TZS 20 | TZS 16,000 |
| Four intended rounds | 4 × TZS 16,000 | TZS 64,000 |
| Separate correction to 50 people | 50 × TZS 20 | TZS 1,000 |
Replace TZS 20 with the actual price for your selected sender. The correction is a separate possible send, not an automatic charge or a required contingency percentage. A full Restart could resend to all 800 contacts instead of those 50, so choose a targeted correction deliberately.
Current prepaid campaign handling can reserve funds for one one-time round or five upcoming recurring rounds. A reservation reduces spendable balance; it is not proof that those rounds were sent. Check actual holds and billing entries rather than treating the four-round illustration as a prediction of the reservation amount.
Reconcile spending with results
After sending, compare the campaign's run and message records with its billing transaction. Current campaign settlement charges the number of messages dispatched for the run at the configured unit price. Delivery or reading is a later outcome, so do not assume every failed delivery automatically produces a refund.
If funds are insufficient, the campaign can pause. Check available funds, existing reservations and the audience before topping up and resuming. If a charge is unclear, retain the campaign name, run, transaction reference, currency and relevant results for support.
Use SMS delivery troubleshooting for outcome checks, sender identity setup for sending readiness, and recurring campaign guidance to control the number of future sends.