--- title: "SMS Brands" description: "The business identity carriers register before they will approve a phone number." url: https://www.unitpost.com/guides/sms-brands section: Guides updated: 2026-10-06 --- # SMS Brands ## SMS Brands > The business identity carriers register before they will approve a phone number. Before you can get a production phone number, carriers need to know who is sending. A brand is that record: your legal entity, your website, and a contact email on that website's domain. It is the first step in SMS setup and every number you request is tied to one. New to the channel? Start with SMS vs email (/guides/sms-vs-email). One brand covers both number types, so you fill this in once. A toll-free number needs the brand complete; a 10-digit local number additionally needs the brand verified with carriers, which adds a tax ID and a one-time fee. If your brand is missing something, the brand page lists exactly which fields are still required. The contact email has to be on the same domain as the brand website. Carriers use it to confirm the business is really yours, and a mismatch is one of the most common rejection reasons, so we check it up front rather than letting a submission fail days later. A brand is registered with US carriers, and the US numbers it backs (toll-free and 10-digit local) deliver to US recipients only — see the reach table in SMS Senders. A Canadian local number on the same brand reaches Canada (no registration; the brand is its owner, not a filing). Reaching other countries needs a Sender ID enabled for that country (free; see SMS Senders); a few countries still need a locally issued number, which is not available in Unitpost yet. ### Company documents Some countries' regulators want to see company paperwork before they approve a Sender ID: a registration certificate, a letter of authorization (sometimes one per mobile carrier), the signatory's ID, a business number such as an Australian ABN. Those are facts about your company, not about one country, so they live on the brand — in the collapsed Company documents section at the bottom of the brand page, or in the optional last step when you create a brand. Upload each once and every country that needs it can use it. - Each row is one document type. It shows the file on record (name, date), lets you download, replace or remove it, and the flags of the countries it unlocks. - PDF, PNG or JPEG, up to 500 KB per file — the carrier registry's limit, so a file that uploads here will also be accepted there. - Documents are not locked when a brand is approved: you can add an Irish certificate after your US 10DLC brand is verified. - A document that a registration under review used can't be removed until the regulator answers; replacing it is how you respond to a correction request. > **Privacy:** Documents are stored encrypted in private storage scoped to your workspace and are only ever sent to the carrier registry of a country you request a Sender ID for, as part of that registration. Each registration records exactly which version of each document it submitted. Unitpost does not review documents itself — the regulator does, and any correction request shows up on the Sender ID with the document it concerns. > **An approved brand is locked:** Once carriers approve a brand, or a phone number is attached to it, its details are locked — editing them would invalidate what was approved. If your business details change, or you are sending on behalf of a different company or website, create a second brand instead. If carriers ask for a correction, the brand unlocks for exactly that. > **Check readiness from your code:** GET /v1/sms/brands returns each brand's status plus a `missing` list, so a script or agent can report whether SMS is ready without opening the dashboard. Creating a brand stays in the dashboard: it is a paid submission to carriers. > **Entered once, reused for every registration:** Your brand's legal name, address, website, contact, industry and company ID are what carriers and regulators verify — for toll-free verification, 10DLC brand registration, and every Sender ID registration abroad. Unitpost maps the same brand onto each regulator's form, so a UK or Spanish Sender ID registration asks only for what that country needs beyond the brand. The brand also carries its one Sender ID string (defaults to the brand name) and its company documents; country-specific answers stay on the registration, never on the brand. ## Related - [SMS Senders](https://www.unitpost.com/guides/sms-senders): The phone numbers and Sender IDs your SMS messages originate from. - [SMS Dashboard](https://www.unitpost.com/guides/sms-dashboard): Your SMS sending at a glance — volume and delivery over the last 30 days. - [SMS Activity](https://www.unitpost.com/guides/sms-activity): The workspace activity stream, scoped to the SMS channel.