The Ultimate Guide to Delivery Report for Text Messages

With around 23 billion SMS messages sent each day, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people are unaware of. From transmitting to a control channel to arriving at the SMS center, your messages go through several stages before arriving in the recipients’ inboxes. It comes as no surprise that some people want to know whether or not their messages are delayed or delivered. Users rarely get a delivery report for text messages, although they can turn on this feature on certain operating systems.

What Is a Delivery Report for Text Messages?

A delivery report is a message from an SMCS (Short Message Service Center) that notifies you that your SMS message was sent to the intended recipient. In other words, an SMS delivery report shows the current status of the text messages you submitted to the carrier.

Contrary to popular belief, text delivery reports do not actually mean that a text message was successfully delivered to the recipient. Instead, it confirms that the message was sent successfully from the device.

When you send a text message from your device, your SMSC is the first to receive it. The server stores and retains the message until it attempts to deliver it. After that, the text message is either delivered or fails to do so. The same concept applies to multimedia messages as well.

Message delivery notifications inform you of the text message delivery status. If the text messages were delivered successfully to the recipient, you will receive an SMS delivery confirmation.

Generally speaking, text message delivery reports fall into five categories:

1. With Carrier
2. Rejected (soft bounce)
3. Rejected (hard bounce)
4. Delivery Status Unknown
5. Successfully Delivery

With Carrier

This indicates that the SMS was submitted to your carrier, but they have yet to return a response.

Rejected (Soft Bounce)

This indicates that the recipient’s number is unreachable at the moment.

Rejected (Hard Bounce)

This indicates that the recipient’s number is invalid or no longer exists.

Delivery Status Unknown

This indicates that the carrier has attempted to deliver the message but cannot confirm if it has done so successfully.

Successful Delivery

This indicates that the carrier confirms the recipient has successfully received the message with an acknowledged delivery receipt (DLR).

SMS Delivery Report Android

Android phones have a feature that allows you to check whether a text message you sent was delivered to the recipient. The feature is turned off by default, so if you want to get SMS delivery reports, you have to turn it on manually.

To enable this, go to “Settings,” tap on “Text Message (SMS) Settings,” and turn on “Delivery Reports.” From that point on, your Android device will start receiving delivery reports for SMS messages, notifying you of the current status of the text message. If your Samsung Galaxy or other Android device support multimedia messaging, you can turn on this feature for both SMS and MMS.

While Android supports delivery reports on its platform, you can also download apps to track your message statuses independently.

SMS Delivery Report iOS

SMS delivery report for iPhones doesn’t work for the standard SMS feature. However, since iOS devices have iMessage, iPhones can receive SMS delivery reports for text messages sent through their iCloud-based messaging system.

There are no expectations regarding standard SMS delivery reports being supported by iOS. Moreover, there are no third-party messaging apps that support this feature on iOS devices because Apple does not allow it.