Staggered Sending

When sending to a large number of recipients, you can choose to stagger your messages over a period of time instead of sending them all at once. This spreads your messages out evenly, which can be useful for:

• Avoiding delivery spikes that may trigger carrier rate limits
• Staggering call-to-action responses so your team can handle them gradually
• Spreading marketing messages throughout the day for better engagement

How to stagger a send

1. Go to Send Messages
2. Add your recipients (50 or more required for staggering)
3. Compose your message
4. Click Advanced options
5. Check Stagger sending over time
6. Enter the time period to spread your messages over (e.g. 2 hours)
7. Click Send Messages

A preview will show you when the last message will be sent.

How it works

Your messages are divided into small batches and sent gradually over your chosen time period. For example, if you send 1,000 messages over 60 minutes, approximately 17 messages will be sent each minute.

Staggering works with both immediate sends and scheduled sends:

• Immediate + stagger: The first batch sends within a minute, and the rest are spread over your chosen period from now
• Scheduled + stagger: All batches are spread over your chosen period starting from your scheduled time

Viewing staggered sends

Staggered sends appear on the Scheduled SMS page with a "staggered" badge showing the duration. You can click into a staggered send to see individual messages, search for specific recipients, or cancel individual messages or the entire send.

Minimum recipients

The stagger option is available when sending to 50 or more recipients. For smaller sends, messages are delivered immediately as normal.

API

You can stagger sends via the API by including the stagger_minutes parameter in your POST /v1/list-send request. For example, "stagger_minutes": 120 will spread the send over 2 hours.