Sending texts and email
Compose, schedule, quiet hours, and how SMS credits are counted from message segments — not one credit per person.
Communications → Compose is the same engine used by sequences, workflows, the roster message button and class messages. Audience, preview, then Send now or pick a time.
A text is rarely one credit. Carriers split longer messages into segments (sometimes called pages or units). Disciplo charges your SMS allowance by those segments, then multiplies by how many people will actually receive the send.
01
Pick the audience and write
Open Compose. Choose people, a list, or another audience the screen offers. Preview. Personalisation tokens are replaced in the preview — read that before you send.
The SMS counter under the message shows the encoding and how many segments the draft uses. Watch it while you write; emoji and curly quotes can change the count.
02
How SMS credits are calculated
Credits are not “one text equals one credit.” For ordinary SMS, Disciplo uses: credits = segments × people who will receive it. Consent, missing numbers and suppressions are already removed from that recipient count.
Plain Latin text (GSM-7) fits about 160 characters in one segment. Longer messages use 153 characters per additional segment. If the message includes emoji, smart quotes, or other non‑GSM characters, the whole message is counted as Unicode (UTF‑16): about 70 characters in the first segment and 67 in each further segment. A few special characters such as € also cost two units even in GSM‑7.
Messages are capped at ten segments. Adding images turns the send into MMS: one credit per recipient (not segmented like SMS). Email stays one credit per recipient.
Example: thirteen people and a two‑segment text uses twenty‑six SMS credits. Allowance and top‑ups live on Settings → Billing; Compose shows the estimate before you send.
03
Quiet hours are a warning, not a lock
If Send now falls inside the church's quiet hours (default 9pm–8am in the church timezone), you will see an alert. You can still send. The same warning appears when a scheduled send would land in that window. The product will not refuse the send — it tells you, and you choose.
That is deliberate. Blocking it trained people to tick a bypass without reading, or to delay a genuine pastoral emergency until morning.
04
Quota still blocks
Quota is money. Before a send leaves, Disciplo reserves the estimated credits against this month’s allowance (and any top‑ups). If the send would exceed what remains, it is blocked with a clear remaining balance — there is no Compose override.
Allowance and top‑ups are on Settings → Billing. Scheduled list sends re‑check unpaid invoices and remaining credits at fire time, the same as Send now.
05
Scheduled sends drain about every five minutes
Scheduled messages sit in a queue. If a scheduled text never arrives, the first question is whether that worker last ran — Communications → Deliverability shows the last drain time.