Transactional vs promotional SMS — what's the difference?
India's TRAI regulations force you to pick a category up front. Picking wrong gets your traffic blocked.
Every SMS sent to an Indian number must be tagged with one of four DLT categories: transactional, service-implicit, service-explicit, or promotional. The category controls who you can send to, when, and at what price.
The quick rule
- Transactional — OTPs and alerts tied to a transaction the customer just made. Not blocked by DND, and no time limit.
- Service-implicit — updates about something the customer already has (order shipped, warranty or recall notices, login OTPs). Not blocked by DND, and no time limit.
- Service-explicit — messages sent on the customer's explicit consent. TRAI's 2026 amendment treats these as promotional messages sent on explicit consent.
- Promotional — offers, deals, newsletters. Only to customers who have not blocked promotions (or who gave explicit digital consent), and only 9am–9pm IST.
Browse other help categories
Getting started
Create your account, add INR credits, complete DLT registration and send your first compliant SMS, WhatsApp message or OTP — all in under fifteen minutes.
WhatsApp Business API
Business API onboarding, template approval and categories, broadcast consent rules, quality rating and tiers, and setting up a shared WhatsApp team inbox.
AI WhatsApp Agents
Train your AI WhatsApp agent on your own knowledge, sync your product catalogue, configure handoff triggers, and serve customers across twelve Indian languages.
OTP & Transactional
Priority routing to the fastest carrier, automatic retry and failover, idempotency keys that stop double-sends, and WhatsApp fallback when SMS is slow.
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