This guide provides a detailed explanation of the various message statuses you may encounter when sending messages through our service. Understanding these statuses can help you troubleshoot issues and ensure your messages are delivered successfully.

Status Flow Diagram

Below is a diagram illustrating the approximate flow of message statuses and their transitions.

Status Breakdown

Queued

Meaning: The request to send the message is with our servers, waiting to be processed. It should be sent to the phone shortly.

What to Do if Stuck: If a message remains in the “Queued” status, could indicate a server or service issue, especially if all your messages are queued. Alternatively, there might be an unhandled rejection of your message. In any case, you can contact support, and we will investigate to clarify and improve our handling of the message status.

Pushing

Meaning: The message has been processed by the service server and is on its way to the mobile gateway.

What to Do if Stuck: If a message is stuck in “Pushing,” it likely indicates that the phone is offline or unable to acknowledge receipt of the message. Check the phone’s status to ensure it is as expected. You can also refer to the status readout in the footer of the Web App (portal.sbmg.app), which uses a traffic light signal to indicate if the phone appears healthy, along with an approximate “last heard from” time.

Blocked

Meaning: The message has been prevented from being sent, likely due to opt-out or account suspension actions.

What to Do if Stuck: If all messages are being blocked, it is likely that your account has been suspended. You should contact support if they haven’t reached out to you already. Typically, suspensions occur due to billing issues or misuse, and we proactively communicate with customers in such cases.

Failed

Meaning: The message reached the phone, but it failed to send. This can happen due to airplane mode being on, no credit on the phone, carrier rejection, or lack of cell service.

What to Do if Stuck: Check the phone to ensure it is in an expected state with good connectivity. Address any issues like airplane mode, credit balance, or service availability to resolve the problem.

Retried

Meaning: These are messages that initially failed and have been replayed to attempt sending again. This will create a new message entry in your report, and the metadata of the message will indicate it was retried from a prior failed attempt.

What to Do if Stuck: Monitor the status of the retried message to see if it progresses to “Sent” or fails again. If it continues to fail, refer to the troubleshooting steps for “Failed” status.

Pending

Meaning: The message is on the mobile gateway, which has acknowledged the request to send and has it queued, preparing to send.

What to Do if Stuck: It is normal for messages to take a while to send, especially if you are sending a large number. We randomly trickle the messages out with a configuration to comply with fair use policies. Over time, depending on the size of your send, you should see these progress to a final status like “Sent” or “Failed.”

Partial Sent

Meaning: We have received a status update from the mobile gateway modem for some segments of the message. This usually means the whole message was sent, though we are yet to see a message that is only partially sent in reality. Experience with feedback from mobile modems shows that if we don’t receive confirmation for all fragments (which would be a “Sent” status), we typically receive confirmation for at least 70% of the fragments.

What to Do if Stuck: Unless you are persistently getting “Partial Sent” statuses, we consider these messages as sent, likely due to race conditions. If this status persists, contact support for further investigation.

Sent

Meaning: The message has been successfully sent, and from everything we can see, it appears to have gone out without issues.

What to Do if Stuck: No action is needed. Everyone’s happy—the message has been delivered successfully!