Help center

Answers in plain words.

The same help that lives inside the app. Every answer here is the answer the product gives, written once and kept true.

Getting startedSendingAudienceComplianceNumbersInsightsBilling & plans
Getting started
What is Txtra?

An RCS-first texting platform for political campaigns of any party. Broadcasts, two-way conversations, sequences, and a voter file on every contact, with a compliance gate under all of it.

How do I get verified?

You register once as a political sender. Txtra files the 10DLC political registration with the carriers and your campaign's verification. Most campaigns clear in days. Nothing sends until it clears, and that's the point.

How do I import my contacts?

Upload a CSV or sync from your CRM. Every imported number needs a consent source on record. The importer asks for it, and a row without one lands as a field contact, visible for canvassing, never textable.

What should my first broadcast be?

A short re-introduction to people who already opted in. Name the campaign, say why you're texting, remind them STOP works. The compliance grade on the compose screen will tell you how it reads before you send.

Sending
Why did my broadcast go out in waves?

Big sends split across your numbers and pace to carrier throughput. Pacing protects deliverability. A blast that ignores throughput gets filtered, and filtered is worse than slow.

Can I personalize a message per person?

Yes. Write once with fields like first name or district, and every recipient gets their own copy. The preview shows a real contact, so you see what Marcus sees, not a template.

How do scheduled and recurring sends work?

Stage a broadcast against a saved group and pick the time. Recurring sends re-resolve the group at each run, so the audience is always current, and every run still passes the gate.

What's a sequence?

Staged touches with waits between them. A welcome, a follow-up three days later, a volunteer ask the week after. Each step waits for you when it needs a human and runs itself when it doesn't.

How does the autoresponder work?

Keywords. Text VOTE to your number and the reply fires day or night, opt-in recorded, tag applied. Every keyword is unlimited on every plan.

What's P2P?

One-to-one at human scale. A volunteer works a queue, every message goes out under their name from an assigned number, and every reply routes back to the person who sent it.

Who approves what the AI writes?

A human, always. The AI drafts in your voice, marked in magenta everywhere it acts. Nothing it writes leaves the building without a person pressing send.

What does RCS get me over SMS?

Branding, read receipts, rich cards, and no per-segment math on supported phones. Txtra sends RCS where the handset takes it and falls back to SMS where it doesn't. You write once.

Audience
Is a voter file consent?

No. Enrichment adds party, precinct, and vote history to contacts you already hold. Only a real opt-in makes a number textable. A matched voter who never opted in stays visible for the field, never for texting.

What counts as consent?

A keyword text, a signed card, a web form, a recorded verbal opt-in at the door. It names the campaign and it's on the record. Appearing in a purchased list is not consent, and the platform treats it that way.

Can I text a bought list?

No. A bought list is a liability wearing a spreadsheet. Import it as field data if you want the doors, then earn the opt-ins.

How do I grow a list that's mine?

Keywords on everything, the porch opt-in during canvassing, the web form on your site. The Grow tools track which source produced which subscriber, so you learn what works.

What's the difference between tags and groups?

A tag is a label on a contact. A group is a saved audience built from tags and voter fields, and it re-resolves every time you use it. Tag people, send to groups.

How does the AI group builder work?

Describe the audience in a sentence. Likely R, voted twice of the last three, District 4. The segment engine turns it into filters you can read, edit, and save.

Compliance
What stops a bad send?

The gate. Consent, quiet hours, STOP status, and sender verification run on every message before it leaves. A send that fails does not go out, whoever pressed the button and whatever the hour.

What happens to a 9pm send?

Quiet hours resolve against each recipient's own state law, in their local time, per person. Recipients in an open window get the message. The rest hold until morning. You don't hold a map of fifty rulebooks. Txtra does.

How is STOP handled?

Instantly and forever. The reply is honored the second it arrives, the contact is closed to texting across the account, and the record keeps the timestamp. HELP gets an automatic answer naming the campaign.

What's the compliance grade?

A read on the message before it sends. Missing opt-out language, risky claims, a quiet-hours collision, it flags them in the compose screen where the fix costs nothing.

What records does Txtra keep?

Every send, every consent, every STOP, timestamped and exportable. When a question comes from a lawyer or the FEC, the answer is a report, not a scramble.

Numbers
What is 10DLC and why does it matter?

The carrier registration that marks you as a known, approved political sender. Registered traffic lands. Unregistered burner traffic gets filtered by lunch. Txtra files the registration for you.

Local, toll-free, or short code?

Local numbers read like a neighbor and fit most races. Toll-free clears higher throughput for big verified senders. A short code is maximum volume with a carrier vetting process behind it.

How long does a short code take?

Eight to twelve weeks. The carriers vet every one, and no tool skips that line. Plan for it, or run toll-free in the meantime.

Why would I want more than one number?

Throughput. A big send split across three locals finishes in a third of the time. Extra locals are $5 a month on any plan.

Insights
What do the reports show?

Delivery, engagement, and compliance, per send and over time. What landed, what got read, what got replies, what got STOPs.

What's in the message log?

Every message the account ever sent or received, searchable, with its delivery state and its thread. The log is the record.

What gets flagged in the inbox?

Replies that need a human. A question, a complaint, a volunteer offer, anything the triage reads as more than a thumbs-up. Flags surface first, the AI drafts a response, you approve it.

What's the morning brief?

One screen, ranked by what it costs to ignore. The cure clock, the reputation move, the pre-flight verdict, the litigator count. The expensive thing sits at the top and you work down until the fires are out.

Billing & plans
What counts as a text?

One SMS segment. Longer messages and media count as more than one. RCS is included. Inbound replies and STOP handling never burn your allowance.

Do you charge per user?

No. Organizers, volunteers, the whole field team, all in on every plan. You pay for texts and numbers.

What does overage cost?

Your plan card shows the rate, and it always costs more than the plan rate on purpose. Living in overage means the next plan up is cheaper, or pre-buy a 10,000-text block at 1.2¢.

Can I change plans mid-cycle?

Up any time, the new allowance kicks in immediately. Down at renewal.

Is the small plan a weaker product?

No. Every plan is the full platform, same compliance, same AI, same voter file. Plans differ on allowance, not on features.