Buy SMS credits and send an SMS

SMS is paid for with credits. Buy credits first, then send.

Buy credits

1. Go to Communications → Credits. Your balance is at the top.
2. Choose a package and select Purchase. Bigger packages cost less per credit — see the pricing page.
3. Pay by card or mobile money on the secure checkout page. You’re brought back to ChurchVex, and the credits are added to your balance.

Credits don’t expire. They stay on your balance for as long as your church has a ChurchVex account, even if your subscription lapses. They can’t be refunded for cash.

Send an SMS

1. Go to Communications → Send.
2. Choose the SMS channel.
3. Under Recipients, choose All Active Members, a Specific Department, Specific Members, or type in Phone Numbers.
4. Type your message.
5. Leave Respect opt-out preferences on to skip members who have opted out of SMS.
6. Choose Send SMS.

How many credits a message uses

Each SMS uses one credit for every 160 units of text, for each person it goes to (the network counts UTF-16 code units, not characters). Almost every character, accented letters included, is 1 unit. Emoji, and other less common symbols and characters outside everyday alphabets, are 2 units each. A 200-unit message to 50 members uses 100 credits. As you type, the Send page shows how many credits the message will use per recipient.

Communications → Logs shows every message sent.

Your church’s sender name

To have SMS show your church’s name as the sender, set an SMS Sender Name in Communications → Settings. It must be approved before it can be used; until then, messages go out with the default sender. The page shows whether your request is pending, approved or rejected.

Email

Email is sent from the same Send page: choose the Email channel, add a Subject, and write your message. Email doesn’t use SMS credits.