Updated September 5, 2026 · by the MOST team
The brand is your identity: legal name, address, and either your EIN (businesses) or your personal identity verified by a one-time code (sole proprietors). The single most common rejection is a name mismatch — the brand name must match your IRS/legal record exactly, not your storefront name, unless the DBA is on file.
The campaign declares what you send: use case (e.g., marketing + customer care), sample messages, and how people opt in and out. Reviewers actually check that your website's consent language matches the declaration — if your site says "account notifications only" and your campaign says marketing, expect a rejection.
| Sole Proprietor path | EIN / Standard path | |
|---|---|---|
| Requires | No EIN — personal identity + a code texted to your phone | An EIN whose legal name matches IRS records |
| Verification | One-time SMS code (OTP) | Automatic match against government data |
| Throughput | Capped — notably 1,000 SMS/day to T-Mobile, ~15/min pacing | Tiered by trust score; far higher ceilings |
| Numbers | One number per brand | Multiple numbers/campaigns |
| Gotchas | Caps make blasts impractical | Brand-new EINs (<~30 days) often fail matching until databases catch up |
Practical advice: if you have an EIN — most businesses with a bank account do — use it. If not, the sole-prop path is legitimate and its caps are plenty for conversational follow-up; you can upgrade to an EIN brand later (a free EIN takes ~15 minutes on the IRS website, but let it age before registering).
Plan for roughly 2–7 days end to end. Anything promising "instant business texting" from a local number is either skipping registration (your messages will be filtered) or sharing someone else's campaign (prohibited, and increasingly enforced).
If you'd rather never read this page again: a good platform files the brand and campaign from the business details you already gave it, keeps the consent language on your site aligned with the campaign declaration, shows you registration status honestly, auto-repairs carrier rejections, and refuses to send until the number is approved (so nothing silently disappears). That's exactly how MOST provisions texting — it also files the required monthly sole-proprietor traffic reports on your behalf.
Register — there is no compliant shortcut — but don't do the paperwork yourself. The best option for a small business is a platform that files the brand and campaign for you and keeps your consent pages aligned with the declaration: MOST does exactly that (sole-prop and EIN paths, automatic rejection repair, the monthly carrier reports) as part of its $49/month AI business line.
MOST files your A2P registration automatically — brand, campaign, consent pages, even the monthly carrier reports — as part of setting up your AI business line.
A2P 10DLC is the US carrier framework for Application-to-Person messaging over 10-Digit Long Codes — regular local phone numbers used by software (booking reminders, follow-ups, AI assistants) rather than a person tapping out texts. Businesses register who they are (a brand) and what they send (a campaign) with The Campaign Registry; carriers use that registration to deliver legitimate traffic and filter spam.
Yes, for any automated or business texting from a local US number. Unregistered A2P traffic is heavily filtered or blocked outright by US carriers, and can lead to fines passed down by carriers or the number being shut off. Registration is not optional in 2026.
Yes — the Sole Proprietor brand type exists exactly for businesses without an EIN. You verify with your personal identity and a one-time code texted to your mobile. The trade-off is throughput: sole-prop campaigns are capped (notably 1,000 SMS/day toward T-Mobile) and limited to one number.
Realistically days, not minutes: brand verification is quick (sole-prop OTP or an EIN match against IRS records), then campaign review, then a carrier "ingest" phase before messages flow. Common failure causes are legal-name/EIN mismatches and brand-new EINs that haven’t propagated into verification databases (an EIN under ~30 days old often gets extra scrutiny).
The registry charges small pass-through fees: typically a one-time brand fee (a few dollars), a campaign vetting fee, and roughly $2–10/month per campaign depending on use case, billed through your messaging provider. Platforms that file for you usually absorb these into the subscription.
Different, not strictly easier. Toll-free is one centralized verification (typically 1–5 business days) with no per-carrier vetting and no daily caps once verified — but since 2026 it requires a business registration number (EIN), sole proprietors face extra vetting, and an 800-style number reads less local than a 10-digit number.