Text Message Marketing Laws and the Four Stop Clocks

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TL;DR: Text message marketing laws are not one rulebook, they are four, and each one fires on a different fact. 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) wants prior express written consent, with a signature and two specific disclosures, before an autodialed marketing text reaches a wireless number. 47 CFR 64.1200(c) and (d) set 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. local calling hours, the national do not call registry and a company internal do not call list, and paragraph (e) applies all of that to text messages sent to wireless numbers regardless of what dialed them. 47 CFR 64.3100 governs the same marketing message when it is addressed to a wireless domain instead of a phone number, and it gives the sender ten days to stop rather than ten business days. Florida’s telephone solicitation statute adds its own pre-suit STOP reply with a fifteen day cure window and damages of actual loss or five hundred dollars, trebled when a court finds the violation willful. Those are the four stop clocks, and a fifth short one sits inside the federal rule, the five minute window for a one-time confirmation text. On November 25, 2026 the FCC’s amended revocation rule starts letting senders designate an exclusive opt out method, which is the reverse of what the rule says today. Carrier and CTIA messaging policy is a separate layer that is not law at all. Build the consent record first, the suppression workflow second, the campaign third.

Why text message marketing laws are four rulebooks, not one

Most teams ask the wrong question. They ask whether texting a prospect is legal. The answer to that question is always “it depends,” which is useless on a Monday when a rep has a list of three hundred numbers and a quota.

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Here is the better question. Which rule applies to this message, and what does that rule need me to be able to prove?

Four separate bodies of law can reach a single marketing text. They are not layers of the same rule. They have different triggers, different enforcers, different remedies, and, most usefully for anyone building a workflow, different deadlines. A sender can be perfectly inside the consent rule and still be in breach of the calling hours rule. A sender can satisfy both and still lose a Florida case over a reply nobody actioned.

So break the question into four:

  • Did the technology you used trigger the written consent requirement? That is 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2).
  • Is the message a solicitation, regardless of technology? That is 47 CFR 64.1200(c), (d) and (e).
  • How was the message addressed? A phone number and a wireless domain address pull in different rules. The second one is 47 CFR 64.3100.
  • Where is the recipient sitting? State telephone solicitation statutes reach text messages directly and carry their own private rights of action.

Four questions, four rules, four clocks. Work the list in that order and the compliance program stops being a document and starts being a set of fields you can inspect.

The text message consent rule that keys off your dialer

Start with the rule everyone has heard of and almost nobody has read.

47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) says no person or entity may initiate, or cause to be initiated, any telephone call that includes or introduces an advertisement or constitutes telemarketing, using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, to any of the lines described in paragraphs (a)(1)(i) through (iii), other than with the prior express written consent of the called party. Paragraph (a)(1)(iii) is the one that matters for texting. It covers any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call.

Read that again and notice what the trigger is. It is not the content of the message on its own. It is the content plus the technology. Advertising or telemarketing content, delivered by an automatic telephone dialing system, to a wireless number. All three.

The rule defines its own term, and the definition is more demanding than the checkbox most lead forms use.

Under 64.1200(f)(9), prior express written consent means an agreement, in writing, bearing the signature of the person called, that clearly authorizes the seller to deliver advertisements or telemarketing messages using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, and that includes the telephone number to which the signatory authorizes delivery. The written agreement must carry a clear and conspicuous disclosure telling the person signing two things. First, that by executing the agreement they authorize the seller to deliver telemarketing calls using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice. Second, that they are not required to sign the agreement, directly or indirectly, or to agree to enter into it, as a condition of purchasing any property, goods, or services.

Signature includes an electronic or digital form of signature to the extent that form is recognized as a valid signature under applicable federal law or state contract law.

Now turn that into fields. A defensible consent record for a single number holds the exact disclosure text that was displayed, the version of the form or page that displayed it, the timestamp, the number submitted, the source, and the affirmative act. Not “the lead opted in.” Which words, on which page, at which second.

That is the whole game. The rule is a documentation rule wearing a consent costume. If the record cannot be produced per number, the consent effectively does not exist, because the only forum that will ever ask for it is one where the other side has already filed.

Grant the premise first. Prior express written consent is the headline requirement and most marketing programs need it.

But the trigger includes an automatic telephone dialing system, and that term has been fought over for years. A rep thumb-typing a message to one number is a different technical act than a platform firing a campaign at a list. Teams read that gap and conclude that manual sending removes the problem.

It does not. It removes one rule and leaves three standing. The next section is the one that gets missed.

The solicitation rules that reach a text whatever sent it

47 CFR 64.1200(c) and (d) are a separate machine. They restrict “telephone solicitation” without caring at all how the message was sent.

And paragraph (e) is the sentence to tape to the wall. It says the rules set forth in paragraphs (c) and (d) are applicable to any person or entity making telephone solicitations or telemarketing calls or text messages to wireless telephone numbers, to the extent described in the Commission’s Report and Order in CG Docket No. 02-278.

Text messages. Named in the rule. No autodialer required.

Calling hours and the national do not call registry

64.1200(c)(1) prohibits initiating any telephone solicitation to a residential telephone subscriber before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., local time at the called party’s location. Paragraph (c)(2) prohibits solicitation to a subscriber who has registered on the national do not call registry, and says those registrations must be honored indefinitely, or until the consumer cancels the registration or the database administrator removes the number.

Two operational consequences fall straight out of that.

The first is that “local time at the called party’s location” is a data problem, not a policy problem. Area code is a guess, and it has been a bad guess since number portability. A team sending at 8:05 a.m. Eastern is sending at 5:05 a.m. Pacific to anybody whose number kept its old area code after a move. If the campaign scheduler cannot resolve recipient time zone from something better than the first three digits, the quiet hours rule is being satisfied by luck.

The second is that the registry is not a once-a-quarter chore. Honored indefinitely means the suppression check happens against the current list at send time, not against an export someone pulled in August. Our rundown of the state telemarketing rules that sit on top of the federal calling hours covers how far the state windows diverge from the federal one.

The internal do not call list

Paragraph (d) is the quiet one. It requires a company specific do not call process, and the obligation it creates is independent of the national registry. A person who asks your company to stop goes on your list, and your list has to work even if that number never appears on the federal registry at all.

This is where most programs actually fail, and the failure is mundane. A prospect replies “take me off this” to a rep’s thread in a shared inbox. The rep marks the thread resolved. The record never reaches the suppression table, because the suppression table is fed by the campaign tool and the reply arrived in the inbox. Two systems, one list, no sync.

So inspect the handoff. Where does an inbound opt out land, what writes it to suppression, how long does that take, and what happens if the rep closes the thread first? If nobody on the team can answer those four questions by naming a field, the internal do not call list is a policy document and not a control.

The text message opt out rule changes on November 25, 2026

This is the part of text message marketing advice that is about to go stale across the whole first page of search results, so it is worth being precise about what changes and when.

What the rule requires today

The current 64.1200(a)(10) is permissive toward the consumer and restrictive toward the sender. A called party may revoke prior express consent, including prior express written consent, for calls or text messages. Replying to an incoming text with “stop,” “quit,” “end,” “revoke,” “opt out,” “cancel,” or “unsubscribe” is a reasonable means per se, and consent is then definitively revoked. If a reply uses other words, the sender must treat it as a valid revocation request if a reasonable person would understand those words to convey one.

All requests made in any reasonable manner must be honored within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt. And the current rule closes the obvious workaround in one sentence: senders of text messages covered by those paragraphs may not designate an exclusive means to request revocation of consent.

There is also a five minute clock most teams have never noticed. Under 64.1200(a)(12), a one-time text confirming a revocation request does not violate the consent rules as long as it merely confirms the request, carries no marketing or promotional content, and is the only additional message sent. If that confirmation goes out within five minutes of receipt, it is presumed to fall within the consumer’s prior express consent. Take longer and the sender has to show the delay was reasonable. Our piece on when a text is the right channel instead of a call works through the consent and revocation mechanics in more operational detail.

What the amended rule lets a sender do

On October 26, 2026 the FCC published a final rule amending 64.1200(a)(9)(iii)(A), (a)(10), (a)(11) and (a)(12), effective November 25, 2026. The direction of travel reverses.

Under the amended (a)(10), callers may designate any of three methods as the exclusive means to revoke consent: an automated, interactive voice or key press activated opt out mechanism on a call; replying to an incoming text with any one of the standardized words listed in the rule; or a website or telephone number designated to process opt out requests. The caller must clearly and conspicuously disclose the designated method on the call or in the text. A text sender that designates a reply as the exclusive means can satisfy the disclosure obligation by including at least one of the standardized words in each message, so long as it recognizes all of them as valid revocation requests. And any caller that designates one of those methods as exclusive is not required to process revocation requests made by any other means.

The amended (a)(11) keeps the current position for everyone who does not designate. Callers that do not designate an exclusive means must still process revocation requests made by any reasonable means.

The ten business day deadline survives the amendment unchanged.

Read as a workflow decision, the new rule offers a trade. Designate, disclose it in every message, and you get a narrower set of inputs to monitor. Decline to designate, and you keep the obligation to catch a revocation in free text, in a voicemail, or in a reply nobody structured. Teams whose opt outs arrive in a shared inbox staffed by reps should probably designate. Teams with real natural language monitoring on inbound replies may prefer not to.

There is a related proposal out for comment, published the same day, asking whether to shorten the revocation deadline, require two-way texting functionality, require a revoke-all method, and change the treatment of affiliates. That one is a notice, not a rule. Nothing in it binds anybody today, and nobody should rebuild a workflow around it yet.

Why the category carve out does not help a marketing text

The amended rule also lets callers interpret a revocation request narrowly, but only in one direction, and the direction excludes marketing.

A revocation made in response to an informational call or text, meaning one that contains no advertising and does not constitute telemarketing, may be interpreted as applying only to the specific category of informational messages to which it was directed, and not to all communications. A revocation made in response to a message that contains an advertisement or constitutes telemarketing revokes consent to all future advertising or telemarketing messages from that caller.

So the carve out rewards clean separation and punishes the blended message. Send a shipping notification that ends with a promo code, catch a STOP, and that STOP now reaches every marketing message you would otherwise have sent that person. Keep the notification clean and the same STOP only closes the notification category.

That is a content decision with a compliance consequence, which is the kind of tradeoff that never survives a quarterly campaign review unless somebody writes it down. The upsell line in the delivery confirmation is not free.

The CAN-SPAM rule for a text sent to an address, not a number

Here is the rule that almost nothing on the first page of search results mentions, and it catches a real pattern.

47 CFR 64.3100 restricts “mobile service commercial messages.” The rule defines an MSCM at paragraph (c)(7) as a commercial electronic mail message transmitted directly to a wireless device used by a subscriber of a commercial mobile service in connection with that service. A commercial message is presumed to be an MSCM if it is sent or directed to any address containing a reference, whether or not displayed, to an internet domain listed on the FCC’s wireless domain names list.

Read the trigger carefully. It is the address, not the phone number. Send a campaign through an email to text gateway, to addresses that look like a ten digit number followed by a carrier domain, and the message is presumed to be an MSCM. Send the identical copy to the identical handset through a messaging platform addressed to the phone number, and you are back under 64.1200 instead.

Two paths, one handset, different rulebooks.

Mobile service commercial messages and the wireless domain list

64.3100(a) says no person or entity may initiate any MSCM unless one of four conditions holds. The first is express prior authorization of the addressee. The second and third are narrow forwarding cases. The fourth is the one worth understanding: the message qualifies if the address does not include a reference to a domain posted on the FCC’s wireless domain names list for at least thirty days before the message was initiated, provided the sender does not knowingly initiate an MSCM.

That fourth condition is a knowledge rule with a thirty day grace period attached to the list, and it is the closest thing to a safe harbor in the section. It protects a sender who could not have known the domain was wireless. It does nothing for a sender who built a gateway campaign on purpose.

The definition of commercial electronic mail message is borrowed from the CAN-SPAM Act and the FTC’s implementing rule at 16 CFR 316, and it carries the same exclusion: the term does not include a transactional or relationship message. The rule lists what that covers, including messages whose primary purpose is to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction the recipient previously agreed to enter into, to provide warranty, recall, safety or security information about a product or service the recipient used or purchased, or to give notice of a change in terms, features, or the recipient’s standing, or periodic account balance information.

A ten day clock and a thirty day obligation

Now compare the deadlines, because this is where a single shared suppression process quietly breaks.

64.3100(b)(1) requires an MSCM sender to cease sending further messages within ten days after receiving a request from a subscriber. Not ten business days. Ten days. Over a holiday week those two deadlines can differ by the better part of a fortnight.

The same paragraph (b) adds obligations the TCPA rules do not impose. The sender must include a functioning return electronic mail address or other internet based mechanism, clearly and conspicuously displayed, for receiving cease requests, and reaching it must not require the subscriber to view or hear further commercial content beyond institutional identification. A recipient who granted authorization electronically must be given a functioning option to reject further messages by the same electronic means used to obtain the authorization. Using at least one of those options must not create additional charges for the subscriber. The sender must identify itself in a way that lets the subscriber reasonably determine who sent the message. And for no less than thirty days after transmission, the sender must remain capable of receiving messages at the address or mechanism it provided.

That last one is a real operational requirement and it is the one teams break without noticing. Spin up a campaign address, run the send, tear the address down at the end of the sprint, and the rule is breached by an action that looked like cleanup.

State telephone solicitation statutes add a fifteen day clock

Federal law is the floor. States build on it, and several of them reach text messages by name with their own private rights of action, which is what turns a compliance miss into a filed case rather than a regulator letter.

A translucent violet glass funnel on a pale violet ground feeds four glass tubes of dramatically different lengths that fan outward, with a single droplet hanging below the shortest

Florida’s telephone solicitation statute is the clearest worked example. It defines a “telephonic sales call” as a telephone call, text message, or voicemail transmission to a consumer for the purpose of soliciting a sale of consumer goods or services, soliciting an extension of credit for them, or obtaining information that will or may be used for direct solicitation. It applies to a telephone solicitor “doing business in this state,” which the statute defines to include businesses conducting telephonic sales calls from other states or nations to consumers located in Florida. Being headquartered elsewhere is not an answer.

The statute carries its own prior express written consent definition, and it is not identical to the federal one. It requires a written agreement bearing the signature of the called party, clearly authorizing a telephonic sales call by telephone call, text message, or voicemail transmission using an automated system for the selection and dialing of telephone numbers, the playing of a recorded message, or the transmission of a prerecorded voicemail. It must include the number authorized, and a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the called party is not required, directly or indirectly, to sign the agreement or agree to enter into it as a condition of purchase.

Then the remedies. A called party aggrieved by a violation may bring an action to enjoin it and to recover actual damages or five hundred dollars, whichever is greater. If the court finds the defendant willfully or knowingly violated the section, it may increase the award to as much as three times that amount.

And the fourth stop clock. Before commencing an action for damages over text message solicitations, the called party must first notify the solicitor by replying STOP to the number the texts came from. Within fifteen days after receipt of that notice, the solicitor must cease sending text message solicitations to that party.

Line the four up and the design requirement becomes obvious.

  • Five minutes. The window in which a one-time revocation confirmation text is presumed to fall inside existing consent, under 64.1200(a)(12).
  • Ten days. The deadline to cease mobile service commercial messages after a subscriber request, under 64.3100(b)(1).
  • Ten business days. The outer limit on honoring a TCPA revocation, under 64.1200(a)(10).
  • Fifteen days. Florida’s pre-suit cure window after a STOP reply, which exists so the solicitor can fix it before damages are available.

Nobody should run four suppression timers. Run one, set it to the shortest deadline that can apply to any message you send, and the other three take care of themselves. That is a five minute acknowledgment and a same-day suppression write, which is well inside every one of them.

Carrier messaging policy is not law

The fifth layer is the one teams hit first in practice, and it is the one that is not law.

Industry messaging principles and carrier program requirements, including the 10DLC registration regime for application to person messaging on US carrier networks, are contractual and operational. They are enforced by carriers and aggregators against your campaign, not by a court against your company. The remedy is throttling, filtering, campaign suspension, or a dead sending number. There is no statutory damages exposure and no class.

That difference matters when prioritizing work, because the two layers fail on different timescales. A carrier policy problem shows up in your delivery rate this week. A statutory problem shows up in a demand letter in eighteen months. Teams tend to fix the first one because they can see it, then mistake a healthy delivery rate for a compliant program.

They are unrelated signals. Our guide to 10DLC registration and carrier requirements for outbound sales texting covers the carrier layer on its own terms, and it is worth reading separately from anything in this article.

Every rule above resolves into the same operational question. Can you produce, per number, the record that the rule asks for?

So evaluate a texting platform the way you would evaluate any system of record. Not by its category label. By what it writes down, what it triggers, and what a manager can inspect six months later when nobody remembers the campaign.

Kixie is a sales engagement platform for business calling and texting. Here is what it does in this specific workflow, in present tense, with the limits named.

Kixie’s business texting logs calls, texts, outcomes and recordings into the CRM automatically. That matters here for one reason that has nothing to do with productivity: the sent message, its timestamp, and the thread it belongs to end up attached to the contact record instead of living in a campaign tool the team will churn out of next year. When an opt out dispute arrives, the thread is in the system of record.

Team SMS gives reps a shared business SMS inbox with automatic thread locking so two people do not answer the same message. For opt out handling that shared inbox is the choke point described earlier, and the thread locking at least guarantees one owner for the reply that says “stop texting me.”

Auto SMS sends automated text messages triggered by call outcomes, with templates and timed follow-ups. This is the feature that needs the most care under the rules above, because an outcome-triggered template is exactly the kind of message that blends a transactional trigger with promotional content. Under the amended revocation rule, blending them is the choice that converts a narrow informational STOP into a blanket marketing STOP. Keep the templates separated by category, and keep the ad out of the confirmation.

Kixie’s National DNC integration checks calling lists against the National Do Not Call Registry and applies suppression workflows. Note the boundary, and Kixie states it on the feature page: customers remain responsible for their own calling practices and should obtain legal guidance for their specific programs. The integration supports a registry process. It does not supply consent, it does not decide whether your message is a solicitation, and it does not know the recipient is in Florida.

That boundary is general, not specific to one vendor. No messaging platform can manufacture a prior express written consent record after the fact. The signature, the disclosure, the number and the timestamp were either captured at the moment of opt in or they were not. Everything downstream is suppression and logging.

A text message marketing compliance checklist

Work it in order. Each line names the rule it answers and the artifact that proves it.

  • Classify the message before anything else. Advertising or telemarketing content, informational content, or a transactional or relationship message. The classification decides which rules apply and, after November 25, 2026, how far a single STOP reaches.
  • Capture consent as a record, not a state. Disclosure text displayed, form version, timestamp, number submitted, source, affirmative act. Required by the prior express written consent definition at 64.1200(f)(9), and by Florida’s parallel definition.
  • Prove the disclosure said both required things. That the signer authorizes automated delivery, and that signing is not a condition of purchase. A consent capture missing the second sentence is not the consent the rule describes.
  • Resolve recipient time zone from better data than area code. Required by the 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time restriction, which paragraph (e) applies to texts.
  • Check the national registry at send time, not from an export. Registrations are honored indefinitely until cancelled or removed.
  • Wire inbound replies into the same suppression table as campaign opt outs. This is the internal do not call obligation and it is the most common silent failure.
  • Decide, in writing, whether you will designate an exclusive revocation method. If yes, disclose it in every message and recognize every standardized word. If no, keep catching free text revocations.
  • Set one suppression deadline at the shortest clock, not four. Five minute acknowledgment, same-day suppression write.
  • Separate promotional content from transactional templates. Mixing them widens the scope of any revocation and can pull a message out of the transactional exclusion entirely.
  • If any campaign goes through an email to text gateway, treat it as a separate program. Different rule, ten day clock, a required functioning reply mechanism, and a thirty day obligation to keep receiving at that address.
  • Audit purchased and partner lists for the consent record, not the assurance. A vendor’s statement that a list is opted in is not the document the rule asks you to produce.
  • Re-check state exposure by recipient location, not by company address. Florida’s statute reaches solicitors doing business from other states into Florida consumers.

Run that list against one live campaign this week. The first line that cannot be answered by naming a field is the actual compliance gap, and it is almost never the one the policy document worries about.

Text message marketing laws FAQs

Not by itself. The written consent definition requires an agreement bearing a signature that clearly authorizes delivery of advertisements or telemarketing messages to a stated number, plus a disclosure that signing is not a condition of purchase. A transaction that collected a mobile number for order updates produced a transactional relationship, not that agreement. The federal rule and Florida’s statute both carry the no-conditioning disclosure requirement, which exists precisely to stop a purchase flow from doubling as a marketing opt in.

Do calling hours apply to text messages?

Yes. 64.1200(c)(1) restricts telephone solicitations to residential subscribers before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time at the called party’s location, and paragraph (e) states that the paragraph (c) and (d) rules apply to telephone solicitations, telemarketing calls or text messages to wireless telephone numbers. The practical difficulty is not the rule. It is resolving local time for a ported number.

Is double opt in legally required?

No, not under that name. The federal rule does not use the term at all, and what it requires instead is a written agreement with a signature, the authorized number, and two specific disclosures. A confirmation step is a common way to strengthen the record and to catch mistyped numbers, and carrier program requirements often expect one, but the statutory obligation is about what the record contains rather than how many steps produced it.

How fast must a STOP reply be honored?

Under 64.1200(a)(10), within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt, and that deadline survives the November 2026 amendment. But three other deadlines can apply to the same reply: ten calendar days if the message was a mobile service commercial message under 64.3100(b)(1), fifteen days under Florida’s pre-suit cure provision, and five minutes for the one-time confirmation text to stay inside existing consent. Build to the shortest one.

Does the November 2026 change mean other opt out methods can be ignored?

Only if you designate, and only within limits. The amended rule lets a caller designate one of three named methods as the exclusive means to revoke, requires clear and conspicuous disclosure of that method, and then relieves the caller of processing requests made by other means. A caller that does not designate must still process revocation requests made by any reasonable means under the amended paragraph (a)(11). The choice is yours; the disclosure obligation comes with it.

What happens when a phone number is reassigned?

Consent attached to a previous subscriber does not travel to a new user of the number, which is why suppression needs to react to delivery signals and complaints rather than trusting the original record forever. Note how narrow the rule’s own porting relief is: 64.1200(a)(1)(iv) protects a call placed to a wireless number ported from wireline only when the call is a voice call, is not knowingly made to a wireless number, is made within fifteen days of the port, and the number is not already on the national registry or the caller’s internal list. A text message does not fit inside that relief at all.

Sources

Sources verified by the Kixie Research Team on November 8, 2026.

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