Suspensions
About a 2-3 minute read.
A suspension is not the same as a rejection. A rejection happens during registration, the campaign never went live. A suspension happens after a campaign was approved and sending: a carrier saw something it didn't like and shut the traffic down. This guide covers why suspensions happen, what to do when one hits, and how to avoid them in the first place.
What a suspension does
When a carrier suspends a brand or campaign:
- The phone numbers are detached from the campaign. They can't send registered traffic anymore.
- Sending stops at the carrier, not inside AgentMessage. Even if the dashboard still shows the campaign, the carrier blocks the messages.
- We let you know. You'll get a notification from AgentMessage with the reason the carrier gave, where one is provided.
Common causes
High spam-complaint rate
Carriers track complaints per million messages. Cross their threshold and the campaign gets flagged and often suspended. Complaint rates climb when:
- You send to people who didn't clearly opt in.
- You send too often, so recipients forget they opted in and report it.
- You send content people didn't expect, promotional messages on a line they signed up to for account notices.
- The list was bought or scraped.
What to do: stop sending to the suspended campaign, audit your opt-in so every recipient has a real, recent consent record, cut frequency if you've been over-sending, and make sure STOP works the first time, every time. Then contact us to discuss next steps.
Content violations
Sending content that breaks carrier content rules, most often SHAFT material (sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco, cannabis) without the right controls, or traffic that doesn't match the registered use case, like heavy promotional content on a campaign registered for account notifications. See Banned and restricted content. If the content is banned outright, the campaign isn't coming back. If it's a restricted category that can be done correctly, the fix is to bring the content into compliance and coordinate reinstatement with us.
Phishing or fraud
Carriers actively look for messages that resemble phishing, fake delivery notices, "click here to verify your account," messages impersonating a bank. These suspensions are fast and hard to reverse. Don't send anything that looks like this. If you've been caught as a false positive, legitimate bank or shipping alerts that pattern-match to phishing, contact us with example messages and an explanation so we can take it up with the carrier.
Sender / brand mismatch
You registered as one brand, but your message content makes it look like you're a different one. Carriers catch this and shut it down. Make sure your registered brand name and your message content line up. If you build agents on behalf of other companies, each of those companies is its own brand, not your platform. See Fix an unverified brand for how sender identity is meant to work.
Number-rotation patterns ("snowshoeing")
Spreading traffic across many numbers in a way that looks like an attempt to dodge per-number filtering. Even legitimate setups can trip this if they rotate through numbers too aggressively. If you genuinely need a large pool of numbers on one campaign, that's a contact-us path, there are carrier-side considerations we handle behind the scenes. If your software is rotating numbers for technical reasons that read as spammy, the fix is usually to consolidate. See How throughput works.
What to do right after a suspension
- Stop sending. Continued attempts after a suspension only count against the account.
- Read the notice. It should name the cause. If it doesn't, contact us.
- Fix the underlying issue first. Don't ask for the suspension to be lifted before you've actually addressed what caused it.
- Decide on the path, appeal, or register a fresh campaign with corrected content.
Appealing a suspension
You can ask a carrier to reverse a suspension, and that's coordinated through AgentMessage, there's no self-serve appeal button. Contact us and we'll handle the filing and back-and-forth with the carrier.
Appeals tend to work when the suspension was a clear false positive, when you've already fixed the root cause and can show it, and when your overall sending history is otherwise clean. They tend to fail when the suspension was for banned content, when the brand has a pattern of compliance issues, or when the appeal is filed without fixing the underlying problem.
When you reach out, have ready: the suspended campaign or brand, the text of the suspension notice, a plain explanation of what caused it and what you changed, and any supporting evidence, an updated opt-in flow, complaint-rate data, cleaned message samples.
When to register fresh instead
If the cause can't be undone and the carrier won't reverse it, the faster path is often to fix the process, register a new campaign with the corrected content, and move your numbers to it. Keep in mind that brand-level complaint history can carry over, and if the whole brand was suspended (not just a campaign), anything new under it may face extra scrutiny. We'll help you weigh appeal vs. fresh registration, contact us.
Preventing suspensions
Most suspensions are avoidable:
- Verify every opt-in. No sends to numbers without a clear, recent consent record.
- Honor STOP immediately and permanently, across every campaign under related brands.
- Match your sending to your registered use case. Don't drift into other content.
- Watch your complaint rate in your reporting and act early if it climbs.
- Don't buy lists.