How does phone number rotation work in InsertLead?

Why number rotation matters

Carriers track sender reputation per phone number. The reputation score factors in: send volume, recipient mix, opt-out rate, spam-flag rate, and pattern consistency. A single number trying to send 5,000 SMS in a day will read as "high-volume bulk" to the carriers, which raises spam scores even if every single message is well-formed and consented.

Spread that 5,000 across 4 numbers and each number sends ~1,250, which is well within the "healthy A2P 10DLC sender" envelope. Each number's reputation stays clean. The deliverability rate — the number of messages that actually reach phones, not the number you tried to send — goes way up.

Industry rule of thumb: aim for under 1,000 SMS per number per day on a healthy A2P 10DLC profile. Higher than that and you start trading deliverability for throughput. Number rotation is the lever that lets you scale send volume without burning any individual number.

How a pool gets assigned per tier

Number counts per tier:

• Starter ($49): 1 number, ~1,000 SMS/day capacity.
• Growth ($99): 2 numbers, ~2,000 SMS/day.
• Scale ($199): 4 numbers, ~4,000 SMS/day.
• Empire ($399): 8 numbers, ~8,000 SMS/day.
• Monolith (custom): custom number pool, custom daily volume.

These numbers come from your Twilio account — we don't provide them, you buy them. When you upgrade tiers, the workflow is: provision more Twilio numbers, register them under your existing A2P 10DLC Campaign, and paste their identifiers into your settings page. The rotation engine picks them up automatically.

Sticky-per-recipient: same number, same lead, every time

Number rotation is per-send for new outreach, but per-conversation for ongoing threads. Concretely: if Linda first received a campaign text from your +1XXX-867-5309 number, every subsequent message she gets from your account will come from the same number. Even if you send another campaign two weeks later, Linda's specific outreach uses the original number so the iMessage / Android thread looks coherent on her phone.

Why this matters: if a lead saw "+15558675309" the first time and then "+15554448123" the next time, that reads as either two different people from the same company (confusing) or a spam pattern (carrier red flag). Sticky rotation keeps each lead's experience clean and our send pattern looking organic.

The sticky assignment is recorded in the database when the first send happens, so even if the lead disappears for months and re-engages, the same number picks up the conversation.

Per-number daily budget

On top of rotation, we cap daily volume per number at the tier-listed ceiling (1,000 SMS/day for Starter's lone number, 1,000 each for Growth's 2 numbers, etc.). When a number hits its ceiling, the queue continues sending but skips that number until the next UTC day rolls.

This is a soft ceiling, not a hard one. If you accidentally start a campaign that would push past the cap, we'll send what fits and queue the rest for tomorrow rather than refusing to send at all. The dashboard shows "X messages queued for tomorrow" so you're never surprised.

How many numbers do I need?

Rule of thumb: numbers_needed = ceil(daily_send_volume / 1000).

• 500 SMS/day: 1 number.
• 2,000 SMS/day: 2 numbers.
• 5,000 SMS/day: 5 numbers (round up — Scale tier covers 4, but for 5,000/day you'd want Scale + 1 extra OR upgrade to Empire).
• 10,000 SMS/day: 10 numbers.

We have an interactive calculator at /pricing/number-calculator that takes your daily volume and tells you which tier fits.

This is "send" volume specifically — the messages you initiate. AI autoresponder replies and inbound conversation traffic don't count against the per-number cap because they're conversational and the carriers treat them differently.