What is an alphanumeric sender ID?
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Alphanumeric sender ID: An alphanumeric sender ID is text, such as a company name, that the recipient’s phone shows instead of the sender’s phone number. It has up to 11 characters: Latin letters, digits and spaces. A bulk SMS provider sets it, not a phone, and recipients usually cannot reply to it.
Example
What a branded SMS looks like
A shop sends order confirmations through a bulk provider with the sender ID “AnnasShop”. The customer sees “AnnasShop” in their message list instead of a number, but if they reply “Can I change the address?”, the reply goes nowhere. The same message sent from the shop’s phone number shows the number, and the customer’s reply comes back to the shop.
Why 11 characters?
The sender address field in the SMS standard (3GPP TS 23.040) fits 11 characters of text. “AnnasShop” works; “Anna’s Flower Shop” has to be shortened. Providers accept Latin letters without diacritics, digits and spaces.
Where it is allowed
Rules differ by country. Some countries allow sender IDs freely, others require registering the name first, and the United States and Canada do not support them at all; there you send from a registered number instead (10DLC, toll-free or short code).
Sender ID or your own number?
They are two ways of sending, not two settings of the same service.
- Sender ID: the brand is visible at once, good for campaigns and alerts to thousands of people; usually no replies, name registration with the provider, a fee per message.
- Your own number: the text looks like it came from a person, the customer can reply, and the reply arrives in the dashboard, API or webhook.
Does smsportal.app support sender IDs?
No. smsportal.app sends every SMS from the SIM card in your Android phone, so recipients see your number and can reply. If a brand name is a must, use a bulk provider; many businesses combine both: conversations from a number, campaigns from a sender ID.