# Coverage & delivery

What happens to your SMS when you send to a country that requires sender registration and yours isn't approved yet: what arrives, under which sender, and what you are charged.

**Language:** en
**Audience:** platform
**TLDR:** Registering your sender is what lets us file it with the operator, which is why your messages arrive under your brand. Without a registration we still send and it is still billed, but delivery is best-effort: the operator may change your sender or filter the message. The panel is what tells you, for your own sender, which countries are approved and which are not.
**Translation key:** platform.channels.sms.coverage-and-delivery
**Search keywords:** unregistered sender, sender not registered, my sms are not arriving, arrived from an unknown number, still charged, billed anyway, message filtered, sender replaced, bypass, best effort, links in sms, short link blocked, why is my brand not showing
**Related pages:** /platform/en/channels/sms/senders-registration, /platform/en/channels/countries
**Docs index (every page):** https://docs.instasent.com/llms.txt
**This zone's index:** https://docs.instasent.com/platform/en/llms.txt
**This page:** https://docs.instasent.com/platform/en/channels/sms/coverage-and-delivery/ (HTML) · https://docs.instasent.com/platform/en/channels/sms/coverage-and-delivery.md (Markdown)
**Other language (es):** https://docs.instasent.com/platform/es/channels/sms/coverage-and-delivery.md

Every country decides which senders it accepts an SMS from. In some, creating
your sender is enough; in others it has to be registered first. This page covers
what happens **when you send to a country that requires it and yours isn't
approved yet** — because it isn't what most people expect: the message goes out
anyway.

## What registration gets you

In countries that ask for it, registering your sender is what lets us **file it
with the operator**. In most cases the operator clears your own sender and your
messages arrive under your brand; in some countries it assigns a different alias,
or a number where text names aren't accepted.

We handle that filing from the register you create in the panel. All you need to
do is create the sender and request the countries. The full process is in
[Senders & registration](/platform/en/channels/sms/senders-registration).

## What happens if you don't have it

Without a register we **still send, and it is still billed**. What changes is the
guarantee: delivery becomes **best-effort**, and from there the country's
operator decides — it may **change your sender** or **filter the message**.

> **Warning**: **No registration doesn't mean no send.** It means we can't promise the message
> arrives, or that it arrives under your name. It goes out and is billed like any
> other. That's why we always recommend registering the countries that require
> it.

This explains two situations that often cause confusion:

- **"My customer says it came from a strange number."** That can happen: your
  sender wasn't approved in that country and the operator replaced it. Your
  reports and exports still show **your** sender, because that's what you sent;
  what changed is what the recipient saw.
- **"It never arrived and you charged me."** That can happen too. The message was
  handed to the operator — which is why it's billed — and the operator dropped
  it.

## Where registration is required

Every country works differently: in some you can send straight away, in others the
sender needs to be registered first, and a few add filings of their own. What each
destination asks for — the paperwork, who files it and how long it takes — is set
out in [Countries](/platform/en/channels/countries).

To see where **your** sender stands, open it under **Settings → Project → Channels
→ SMS**: it shows, country by country, which are approved and which need
registration. Use **Request country** to add one.

## Links have rules too

In some destinations operators **restrict links** inside an SMS: they may require
the domain to be registered beforehand, filter the message carrying it, or strip
the link out. This is separate from the sender restriction: you can have an
approved sender and still have your links limited.

If your campaigns carry links and you send outside your usual market, check with
us before a large send. Using your own
[branded domain](/platform/en/project-settings/short-links-branded-domain) helps,
because a known, stable domain gets through filters more reliably than a
generic shortener.

{/* VERIFY: per-country link restrictions are recorded in the operator catalogue but are not enforced at send time (no component reads them), and the outcome field is "unknown" in 24 of the 29 countries that declare they reject links. Hence the pattern is described and no list is published: we can't assert what the source doesn't assert. */}

## RCS works the other way round

Don't carry the above over to the other channel — the rule is the opposite:

- **On SMS**, without a register the message still goes out and delivery is
  best-effort.
- **On RCS**, without an approved register **nothing is sent to that country**,
  no exceptions. Your contacts only receive something if you have
  [SMS fallback](/platform/en/channels/rcs/sms-fallback) enabled, and then they
  receive it as an SMS.

The RCS detail is in
[Senders & verification](/platform/en/channels/rcs/senders-verification) and
[Availability](/platform/en/channels/rcs/availability).

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This is one page of the Instasent documentation. For the complete machine-readable index of every guide and API reference, fetch https://docs.instasent.com/llms.txt — start there for full context.