Textline allows customers to buy credits for their monthly usage. This setup allows customers to plan their messaging purchases in advance and have predictable budgets. By purchasing messages in bulk, in advance, you have a discount on your monthly message usage. You can do this in your organizational settings here. If you do not see a message credit option, you may be on an old subscription plan. Please reach out to Textline Support to talk about updating to a current plan.

When purchasing messages in bulk, Textline customers will keep their messages until they use them. This means that message credits will roll over from month to month. Rollover credits have no expiration date.

If you ever run out of messages, Textline will auto-purchase backup credits for you. This will allow you to message without any breaks. You can also set a threshold when to buy backup credits so that you don’t experience downtime if the credit card you have on file has an issue.

When configuring your message credits, Textline has the current minimums:

Bulk Credits: 500

Backup Threshold: 0

Backup Credits: 250

As we mentioned above, bulk credits are discounted, so pre-purchasing your credits will get you cheaper messages. Credits also roll over, so you can always revisit and lower your credits if you buy too many in one month. You can constantly do this, fine-tuning your purchase amount month to month, until you hit the sweet spot.

Even though we allow a backup threshold of zero, we highly suggest that you set a threshold greater than 0. 15 credits is the most common setting. We suggest having a higher threshold because there are instances where a credit card can take some time to process. While usually nearly instantaneous, credit card transactions can take upwards of a minute to process, and if you’re in the middle of sending an Announcement or Survey to many customers, having a low or 0 threshold will mean that the Announcement or Survey will be canceled if you run out of credits before the backup credits are purchased.

Having a higher backup threshold will also allow you to fix any errors your card may have. Business credit cards often have low limits (to allow for budgeting) or get replaced frequently. If you forget to update your credit card in Textline and run out of credits, you won’t be able to send messages or view incoming messages until you get in a new card. Having a higher threshold will give you a grace period to update or fix your credit card before your credits run out.