Overview
One credit pays for one SMS segment. A short text is one segment. A longer one is split into parts, and you pay a credit for each part, for each client it reaches. How many characters fit into a segment depends on which of two alphabets your wording uses. One unusual character moves the whole message to the smaller alphabet and roughly doubles what it costs. Email never uses SMS credits. Everything on this page is about SMS.The two encodings
The per-part budget is smaller than the single-segment one, so a 200-character standard text costs 2 segments: 153 characters in the first part and 47 in the second.
What counts as standard text
Standard text is the GSM-7 alphabet. It covers a to z in both cases, digits, spaces, line breaks, and this punctuation:! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ _ £ ¥ ¤ § ¡ ¿
It also covers more accented letters than most people expect. Every one of these costs exactly the same as a plain letter:
à ä å é è ì ò ù ü ö ñ Å Ä Ö Ñ Ü É Ç Ø ø Æ æ ß
Not every accent made the list, though, and the gaps are not obvious: é and ì are standard, while í, á, ó, ú and a lowercase ç are not. A client name carrying one of those switches that message to Unicode.
Nine characters count as standard but cost two characters each, because of how they are transmitted: ^ { } \ [ ] ~ | and €. So €45 uses four of your 160, not three.
What switches a message to Unicode
One character anywhere in the body is enough, and it moves the entire message onto the 70 and 67 budgets.
Most emoji count as two characters rather than one.
Where Bella shows the count
In the Messages inbox. The compose box under a conversation, and the New message panel, both show the character count, then the segments and credits the message will use (“2 segments · 2 credits”). A small Unicode badge appears as soon as something in your text switches the encoding, so you can see the cost change while you type. On an SMS campaign’s Compose step. You get the character count, the number of SMS segments, and how many more characters fit before another segment is added. When theAppend "Reply STOP to opt out." toggle is on, that footer is part of the count and the line reads “incl. opt-out footer”.
On an SMS campaign’s Review step. Credits required shows the total as segments multiplied by recipients, sitting next to Credits available and your reset date, before you send anything.
Bella’s own wording is already cheap
Every default template Bella ships stays inside the standard alphabet on purpose, and that is checked automatically, so no new template can slip through carrying a curly apostrophe, a long dash or an ellipsis. Values Bella composes for you follow the same rule, which is why a service and its variant render as “Hair Colour - First Colour Appointment” with a plain hyphen. The one deliberate exception is the birthday greeting, which keeps its cake emoji 🎂 because the emoji is the point of that message. Your punctuation is never rewritten: Bella sends your wording as you typed it rather than silently swapping characters. What changes before sending is variables -{{FirstName}} and the rest are filled in first, and you are charged for the message as it actually goes out. In the Messages compose box, which has no variables, the count you see is exactly what you pay.
Keeping a custom template cheap
- Type apostrophes and quotation marks straight:
'and". A curly apostrophe is the most common accidental switch to Unicode, and the hardest to spot afterwards. - Use a plain hyphen
-where you would reach for a long dash. - Write three full stops rather than the single-character ellipsis.
- Draft in the Bella composer instead of Word, Google Docs, Pages or Notes. Those apps replace straight punctuation with curly punctuation as you type, and the swap travels with a copy and paste.
- Spend emoji deliberately. In a marketing campaign to 800 clients, one emoji can be the difference between 800 credits and 1,600.
- Aim to land under 160 characters once your variables have been filled in.
Variables change the length
Bella counts the message it actually sends, after{{FirstName}}, {{BusinessName}} and the rest have been replaced with real values. The composer can only count the token you typed, so a template sitting a few characters below a segment boundary will tip over it for clients with longer names or longer service names.
In a campaign this happens per recipient: the credit check and the charge both run on each client’s own personalised copy, so two clients in the same campaign can cost different amounts.
Leave yourself some headroom under the boundary whenever a template uses several variables.
Where credits come from
Sending draws down in this order:- Your plan’s monthly SMS allowance, which resets each billing period
- Additional credits - purchased credit packs plus your Messages Plus renewal credits. These never expire and roll over
- Auto-top-up, if you have switched it on, which buys another pack once both pools are empty
Worked examples
The last row is the useful one: an emoji is only expensive once the message is long enough for the smaller budget to bite.
FAQs
Q: Does email cost credits? A: No. Email messages and email campaigns use no SMS credits at all. Credits are spent on SMS only. Q: Is a long message rejected, or split? A: Split. The parts are reassembled so your client sees one message, and you pay one credit per part. A single SMS is capped at 640 characters in the composer. Q: Do line breaks cost anything? A: A line break counts as one character, the same as a letter. A blank line between two paragraphs is two. Q: Are accented client names expensive? A: Some are, some aren’t.é, ä, ø and ß are standard text and cost nothing extra. í, á, ó and a lowercase ç are not, and one of them in the body switches that message to the 70-character budget.
Q: Do automated reminders count the same way?
A: Yes. Reminders, confirmations and the rest are counted exactly like a message you typed, on the wording that goes out after variables are filled in.
Q: A client replied to me. Did that cost a credit?
A: No. Credits are charged on messages your business sends, not on messages you receive.
Q: My campaign says it needs more credits than the message has segments. Why?
A: Because the message goes to everyone in your audience. A 2-segment campaign to 300 clients needs 600 credits. The Review step shows that total before you send.
Q: Can I see what a message cost after it was sent?
A: For a plain message, yes - the composer’s count is what you were charged. For a template or campaign carrying variables, the charge is measured on the message after the variables are filled in, so it can differ by a segment for clients with long names. Your remaining balance and recent credit transactions are on Settings → SMS credits.