SMS in the Outbound Stack: A RevOps Implementation Guide (2026)

SMS reply rates outperform email by roughly 5 to 10x on opted-in lists, which is why most sales teams already use it (often without RevOps knowing). Q1 2026 carrier filtering tightened materially and TCPA litigation against B2B senders is up. RevOps owns five things if SMS is going to run cleanly: consent capture, DNC scrubbing, opt-out propagation, A2P 10DLC registration, and litigator-list filtering. Tool choice depends on motion: B2B SaaS picks Salesmsg or Outreach; consumer-volume inside sales picks Smarter Contact; embedded developer use picks Sakari. Most orgs can bring shadow-IT SMS under proper architecture in 90 days.

Why This Matters in 2026

Three things changed in the last 12 months. First, carrier filtering got materially stricter. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon tightened content filters in Q1 2026 in response to scam-message volume, and unregistered traffic now sees 60 to 80% silent drop rates. Second, TCPA suits against B2B senders are up. Plaintiff firms have moved from consumer cases into business-line texts, especially in Florida (FTSA), Washington (CEMA), and Oklahoma (TCPA). Third, AI-generated SMS content has flooded inboxes, which means buyer tolerance for sloppy or non-compliant sends is at an all-time low.

The result is that SMS works better than ever as a channel when run correctly, and worse than ever when run as shadow IT. Reply rates on opted-in, segmented lists routinely hit 15 to 30% within 24 hours. Unopted-in cold SMS in 2026 gets a 1 to 3% reply rate, a class-action invitation, and a damaged sender reputation.

This guide walks through how a RevOps team brings SMS under proper architecture: who owns what, what tools to pick by motion, how compliance flows work, and how attribution gets wired into the CRM. It is implementation-focused, not a tool roundup.

The Reality Check: What Is Happening On Most Teams

Before you architect anything, audit what is already in production. In our experience supporting RevOps teams across SaaS and consumer-adjacent verticals, the most common shadow-IT pattern looks like this:

• SDRs text from personal phones. They use their own cell numbers for "warm" follow-ups after a meeting. No CRM logging, no opt-out tracking, no audit trail.
• AEs run ad-hoc Twilio scripts. Someone on the team built a Python script that hits the Twilio API. It works fine for low volume. There is no campaign registration, no STOP keyword handling, no suppression list.
• Marketing uses one tool, sales uses another. Marketing has TextMagic or SimpleTexting for promo campaigns. Sales has a separate Salesmsg or Heymarket trial that AEs share. The two systems do not sync.
• Nobody tracks opt-outs. Recipients reply STOP and the rep manually marks the lead as Do-Not-Call, sometimes. Opt-outs do not propagate to email, marketing automation, or the dialer.
• Finance discovers a $30K Twilio bill. The script is sending more than anyone realized. Per-segment charges plus carrier surcharges plus unregistered-traffic penalties add up fast.
• Legal asks the question. "Are we TCPA-compliant?" Nobody can answer. There is no consent record, no policy document, no audit trail.

Every line above is a real conversation we have had with a RevOps director in the last 18 months. The fix is not banning SMS. The fix is bringing it under architecture that scales. The rest of this guide walks through that architecture.

Decision: Should You Turn On SMS At All?

Before the compliance work and the tool selection, answer the prior question: does SMS belong in your motion? Reply-rate lift on SMS is well documented when the recipient is opted in and warmed. It does not save a cold list, and it amplifies the bad consequences of sending to the wrong audience.

Strong fit: consumer-adjacent inside sales

If your motion is mortgage, real estate, solar, debt relief, life insurance, home services, or any high-volume consumer-adjacent inside sales, SMS is a core channel. Buyers expect text follow-up. Phone calls go to voicemail. Email lives in promotions tabs. The math works because per-message costs are low, opt-in volume is high (lead forms include phone with implied or explicit SMS consent), and reply rates on warmed leads are 20 to 40%. In these motions, SMS is not optional. It is the channel.

Moderate fit: B2B SaaS for post-reply and confirms

For B2B SaaS selling into enterprise or mid-market, SMS works for two narrow use cases. First, post-reply nudges: a buyer agreed to a meeting on email, the meeting is in 2 hours, send a confirmation text. Reply rates are high because consent was just established. Second, stalled-deal re-engagement after a buyer has gone quiet for 7 to 14 days post-demo. In both cases the prerequisite is that the buyer already engaged. Cold SMS to an enterprise contact who never opted in is high-risk and low-yield in 2026.

Moderate fit: PLG with high-volume MQLs

If you are running a self-serve PLG motion with thousands of MQLs per month and a sales-assist layer, SMS works well for stalled-trial re-engagement. The buyer signed up, gave a phone number, agreed to terms, and then went inactive. A short SMS at day 5 or day 10 of trial inactivity reactivates a meaningful percentage. The compliance position is strong because the buyer just consented as part of signup, and the use case is service-adjacent (helping the user finish what they started) rather than promotional.

Worst fit: cold enterprise SMS

Sending cold SMS to enterprise contacts who never explicitly consented to SMS specifically is the worst-fit use case. TCPA risk is high (the FTSA in Florida and CEMA in Washington both have statutory damages clauses that apply to business-line numbers in some interpretations). Reply rates are low because the channel feels invasive on a work line. Brand damage compounds. If your CRO is pitching this, push back with the legal-risk math: a single class action settlement runs $500K to $5M, and the upside of cold SMS over cold email plus phone is marginal at best.

Compliance Architecture: The 5 Things RevOps Owns

Once SMS is approved as a channel, RevOps owns five compliance functions. None of them can live with a single rep or a single tool. They are systems.

1. TCPA consent management

The TCPA (47 U.S.C. § 227) requires prior express written consent for marketing SMS to any wireless number. "Written" includes electronic checkboxes, signed contracts, and digital agreements with a clear opt-in. The consent must specifically reference SMS. Implied consent (someone gave you their phone number as part of a sales conversation) is not enough for marketing texts. Several state statutes (FTSA, CEMA, OK TCPA) add their own requirements on top.

What RevOps owns at this layer: where consent is captured, what counts as valid consent, how it gets stored, and how it gets retrieved during litigation. The minimum architecture: every web form that captures a phone number includes a separate, unchecked checkbox with explicit SMS opt-in language naming your company. The form submission writes the consent timestamp, IP address, form URL, and exact consent language to a Consent object in the CRM. The Consent record is immutable (you do not overwrite it). If a recipient later disputes, you produce the Consent record as evidence.

Example consent language that lawyers tend to accept: "I agree to receive marketing text messages from [Company] at the phone number provided. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of purchase."

2. DNC scrubbing

Two lists matter: the federal Do-Not-Call Registry and state-level DNC lists. Federal DNC primarily applies to telemarketing calls but several state statutes extend coverage to SMS. The compliance answer is to scrub every send against both before transmission. Most enterprise SMS platforms (Salesmsg, Sakari, Heymarket) integrate DNC scrubbing as a native feature. Consumer-volume platforms like Smarter Contact and BatchLeads bundle it.

If your tool does not scrub natively, integrate a service: Contact Center Compliance (DNC.com), PossibleNOW, or RealPhoneValidation. Plan on $0.001 to $0.005 per scrub at volume. Scrub at send time, not at list-build time, because list-build scrubs go stale.

3. Opt-out mechanics

STOP keyword handling is the basic compliance bar. Every SMS platform handles it natively (recipient replies STOP, platform suppresses the number for that brand). The harder problem is propagation. If a recipient texts STOP to your SMS tool, that suppression has to flow to:

• The CRM, as a Do-Not-Contact flag on the Contact or Lead record.
• Marketing automation (HubSpot Marketing, Marketo, Pardot), so the contact is removed from email nurture.
• The dialer (Aircall, Dialpad, RingCentral), so the contact is excluded from auto-dial lists.
• Any other outbound channel.

The architectural pattern is webhook-driven: the SMS tool fires an opt-out webhook to the CRM. A Flow (Salesforce) or Workflow (HubSpot) sets a global Do-Not-Contact-SMS flag and a Do-Not-Contact-All flag if the message text included "stop emailing me" or similar. Other systems read the flag before sending. Centralize the suppression list in the CRM. Treat the SMS tool as a downstream consumer of the truth, not the source of truth.

4. A2P 10DLC brand registration

Application-to-Person (A2P) traffic over 10-digit long codes (10DLC) requires brand and campaign registration with The Campaign Registry (TCR). Without it, carriers throttle aggressively and apply unregistered-traffic surcharges. Throughput drops to roughly 75 messages per day before filtering kicks in, and on top of that recipients increasingly see your messages flagged "Potential Spam" or silently dropped.

The process: register your brand with TCR through your SMS platform or directly. Brand vetting is $4 one-time. Campaign approval is $10 to $40 per campaign per month depending on use case (marketing, account notifications, customer care). Standard throughput tier allows roughly 4,500 messages per day per phone number. Premium tier (requires enhanced vetting) allows up to 200 messages per minute, which is roughly 12,000 per hour per number. End-to-end timeline in 2026 is 7 to 14 days for a clean registration. Some verticals (debt collection, lending, healthcare, cannabis) routinely face additional vetting that extends timeline by another 5 to 10 days.

RevOps owns the registration itself, the renewal cadence, and the campaign-to-use-case mapping. Most enterprise SMS platforms handle the TCR submission for you but you still own the brand details and the campaign descriptions.

5. Litigator-list filtering

This is the one most teams skip. Commercial litigator lists (Blacklist Alliance, TCPA Sanity Checker, TCPA Defense Force) maintain databases of phone numbers tied to known plaintiff attorneys and serial litigators. Pricing is typically $0.005 to $0.02 per record scrub. Cheap insurance: scrubbing 100,000 sends costs $500 to $2,000 and prevents a single class-action invitation. Treat this as a mandatory step in the send pipeline, not a nice-to-have. Most consumer-volume SMS platforms (Smarter Contact, BatchLeads) include litigator scrubbing as a feature. B2B platforms generally do not, so RevOps integrates the scrub separately.

CRM Integration Patterns

Two architectural patterns dominate the SMS-CRM integration question. Pick one consciously. The wrong choice locks in years of integration debt.

Pattern A: SMS as a native CRM object

The SMS platform writes Message records directly to the CRM as a custom object (or a native object, in the case of Sales Cloud Engage). The Contact or Lead is the parent. Messages associate to Opportunities and Campaigns. Reports run against the Message object directly. Examples: Salesmsg, Heymarket, Sales Cloud Engage.

Strengths: tight integration, single source of truth, reports work without external joins, AE workflow stays in the CRM tab. Weaknesses: heavier setup, more dependent on the CRM platform, harder to swap the SMS tool later.

Recommended when: your team lives in the CRM all day, you want sales reps to send SMS from the Contact or Opportunity record, and you have CRM admin capacity for the custom-object setup.

Pattern B: SMS as external platform with sync

The SMS platform is the system of record for messages. The CRM gets a summary sync (logged Activity, Task, or Note) with key metadata: outbound sent, reply received, opt-out, link clicks. Examples: Smarter Contact, Sakari, SimpleTexting, Twilio with a Zapier or workflow layer.

Strengths: more flexible, supports high-volume sends that would overwhelm CRM storage, easier to swap tools later. Weaknesses: two systems of record, attribution requires the sync layer to be reliable, reports need cross-tool joins.

Recommended when: SMS volume is high (10K+ sends per day), the SMS platform has specialized features (RVM, skip tracing, dialer) that the CRM cannot match, or you need to operate SMS partly outside the CRM (marketing campaigns, list builds, batch sends).

Reference data flow

For a consumer-volume inside sales motion using Pattern B with HubSpot as the CRM, the flow looks like this. A lead form submission writes Contact + Consent records to HubSpot. A daily workflow pushes Contacts with SMS Opt-In = true to the SMS platform list. Reps send from the SMS platform. Each send fires a webhook back to HubSpot creating a "SMS Sent" Activity on the Contact. Replies fire a "SMS Reply" Activity. STOP triggers a workflow that sets DNC-SMS = true, removes from the SMS platform list, removes from active marketing nurture, and flags the Contact owner. Reporting joins HubSpot Activity data to HubSpot Deal data for revenue attribution. For Salesforce, the equivalent flow uses Flow Builder, Tasks, and a custom SMS Message object if you want richer reporting than Tasks support.

Tool Selection By Motion

Match the tool to the motion, not the other way around. The most common bad outcome is buying a platform built for a motion you do not run.

B2B SaaS outbound (mid-market to enterprise)

Best fits: Salesmsg, Heymarket, Sales Cloud Engage, or Outreach's SMS module if you already run Outreach. Volume is moderate (each rep sends 30 to 100 messages per week). Integration depth matters more than volume capacity. The SMS lives inside the AE workflow alongside email, call, and meeting activity. Native CRM object integration is the architectural priority. Per-rep cost typically runs $20 to $50 per month plus message costs.

Consumer high-volume (real estate, mortgage, solar, debt relief, home services)

Best fits: Smarter Contact or BatchLeads. Volume is high (10K to 100K messages per day per team), opt-in is captured at lead-form level, and the platform needs to bundle DNC scrubbing, litigator-list filtering, ringless voicemail, skip tracing, and a dialer because reps move between channels in a single workflow.

If your sales motion is consumer-facing high-volume and includes ringless voicemail, Smarter Contact's integrated stack (bulk SMS plus RVM plus skip tracing plus DNC scrubbing plus dialer) replaces 3 to 4 separate tools. Subscription is $197 per month base with per-message costs that scale linearly. RevOps teams supporting real-estate-adjacent inside sales should evaluate it before assembling the same capabilities from point solutions, which usually costs more in license fees and in integration overhead.

Embedded developer use

Best fits: Sakari or Twilio direct. If your engineering team is building SMS into a product workflow (trial-activation nudges, in-app notifications, custom drip sequences keyed to product events), use a developer-friendly API. Sakari layers a thin operational UI on top, which is useful when ops and engineering share the channel. Twilio direct is more work but more flexible. Both require you to build the compliance layer (consent storage, opt-out propagation, DNC scrub) yourself or integrate it.

Mid-market shared inboxes

Best fits: Heymarket. If your team uses shared SMS inboxes for AE-AM handoffs, customer success, or pooled SDR coverage, Heymarket's shared-inbox model is purpose-built. The integration into HubSpot and Salesforce is solid but lighter than Salesmsg.

Attribution and Reporting

Most SMS tools report sent, delivered, and replied. That is the operational layer. RevOps owns the pipeline-attribution layer on top.

UTM equivalent: link-shortener tracking

SMS does not carry query strings the way email does. The standard solution is a branded link shortener (Bitly, Rebrandly, or the SMS platform's native shortener) that resolves through a tracking URL. Each shortened link is a unique campaign-rep-contact identifier. Click events fire to a tracking endpoint that writes back to the CRM. Reporting joins Click events to Deal records to attribute SMS-sourced or SMS-influenced pipeline.

Per-rep attribution via assigned numbers

If every rep has a dedicated outbound number, attribution is straightforward: any reply to rep number X belongs to rep X. If reps share a pool of numbers, attribution requires the SMS platform to track which rep initiated which thread. All major B2B SMS platforms do this natively. Verify before you buy.

The reply-to-meeting flow

The single most common reporting gotcha: SMS tools count replies, but most pipeline attribution requires linking the reply to a downstream meeting or opportunity. The fix is a CRM-level flow: SMS reply received writes a Task. A rep manually links the Task to an Opportunity, or the rep books a meeting and the calendar tool (Chili Piper, HubSpot Meetings) carries the SMS reply ID as a UTM-equivalent. Reporting then chains Reply to Meeting to Opportunity to ARR.

Reports that matter

• SMS reply rate by rep. Surfaces inconsistency in messaging quality.
• Reply-to-meeting conversion. Tests whether SMS replies book meetings downstream.
• SMS-sourced ARR. Pipeline and closed-won where the first qualifying touch was SMS.
• SMS-influenced ARR. Pipeline where SMS was one of multiple touches in the buyer journey.
• Opt-out rate. Compliance signal. Anything above 2 to 3% per send means your list is wrong or your message is bad.

Sender Setup Checklist

The 12-step launch process for bringing SMS under proper architecture. Run these sequentially.

1. Inventory shadow IT. List every tool currently sending SMS on behalf of the company (personal phones, ad-hoc scripts, marketing automation, sales platforms). Decommission what is not going forward.
2. Pick the platform. Match to motion using the tool selection section above. Confirm CRM integration depth before signing.
3. Register the brand with TCR. Submit through the platform. Plan 1 to 3 business days for brand vetting.
4. Register campaigns by use case. Marketing, customer care, account notification, lead alerts. Each has its own campaign with description, sample messages, and opt-in flow.
5. Update opt-in language on every form. Every web form that captures a phone number gets a separate, unchecked SMS opt-in checkbox with the consent language above. Audit existing forms.
6. Build the Consent object in the CRM. Custom object on Contact and Lead. Fields: consent timestamp, consent IP address, consent form URL, consent language version, consent source. Make it immutable.
7. Import suppression lists. Federal DNC, state DNC where applicable, your own historical opt-outs, your own historical complaints, your own competitive intelligence list (people you specifically do not message). Push to the SMS platform as a global suppression.
8. Configure STOP keyword and opt-out webhook. Verify STOP triggers immediate suppression in the SMS tool. Configure the webhook from SMS tool to CRM. Build the CRM Flow or Workflow that propagates the suppression cross-channel.
9. Integrate litigator-list scrubbing. Blacklist Alliance or equivalent at send time.
10. Pick throughput tier. Standard (4,500/day) for most teams. Premium (200/min) if you run high-volume batch sends.
11. Train reps and document policy. Written SMS policy (when to send, what to send, what not to send). Annual TCPA refresh. Audit logs reviewed quarterly.
12. Launch with a single use case. One campaign, one rep cohort, two weeks of measurement before scaling. Watch opt-out rate and reply rate as the leading indicators.

Cost Modeling

Annual all-in cost for B2B SMS, by team size. These ranges assume mid-market SaaS motion (each rep sends 80 to 150 messages per week, mostly to opted-in contacts, mix of warm follow-up and post-reply nudges). Consumer-high-volume motions look different and are noted below.

20-rep team

$15,000 to $30,000 per year all-in. Platform subscription $4,800 to $12,000 (Salesmsg or Heymarket at $20 to $50 per rep per month). Per-message costs $3,000 to $7,000. Brand and campaign fees $300 to $1,200. DNC and litigator scrubbing $1,500 to $4,000. Carrier surcharges $1,000 to $2,500. Implementation labor (one-time) $5,000 to $15,000 if you use a consultant, or 40 to 80 hours of internal RevOps time.

50-rep team

$25,000 to $60,000 per year all-in. Platform subscription $12,000 to $24,000. Per-message costs $8,000 to $20,000. Brand and campaign fees $300 to $1,200. DNC and litigator scrubbing $3,000 to $8,000. Carrier surcharges $1,500 to $4,000.

100-rep team

$50,000 to $120,000 per year all-in. Platform subscription $24,000 to $48,000. Per-message costs $15,000 to $40,000. Brand and campaign fees $600 to $2,400. DNC and litigator scrubbing $6,000 to $15,000. Carrier surcharges $3,000 to $8,000. Enterprise plans may also include dedicated short codes ($500 to $1,500 per month per short code) for higher-throughput marketing sends.

Consumer high-volume comparison

A 20-rep real-estate inside-sales team sending 5,000 SMS per rep per month plus ringless voicemail plus skip tracing runs $80,000 to $180,000 per year all-in, with most of the cost in per-message and RVM volume rather than platform subscription. Smarter Contact at $197 per month base plus volume pricing tends to come in 20 to 35% under a Twilio-plus-Bandwidth-plus-separate-DNC stack at the same volume, primarily because it bundles RVM, skip tracing, and litigator scrubbing into the base platform.

Wrap: 90 Days to Architected SMS

Most RevOps teams can bring shadow-IT SMS under proper architecture in 90 days. Week 1 to 2: inventory and platform selection. Week 3 to 4: brand and campaign registration. Week 5 to 6: CRM integration, Consent object, opt-out webhook. Week 7 to 8: suppression list builds, litigator scrubbing integration, form audits. Week 9 to 10: pilot launch with one rep cohort. Week 11 to 12: measure, adjust, scale to remaining teams. By day 90 you have a documented compliance position, a working CRM-to-SMS integration, attribution flowing into pipeline reports, and a written policy your legal team can defend.

The hard part is not the technology. The hard part is taking the existing shadow-IT volume off the personal phones and the ad-hoc scripts and routing it through the architected stack without breaking rep workflow. Lead with the rep pain points (per-rep attribution that shows up in their quarterly review, faster reply handling, fewer manual opt-out chases) rather than the compliance argument. Compliance gets you the executive sponsorship. Rep experience gets you the adoption.

For related outbound and CRM operations, see dark funnel attribution, CRM data hygiene, and lead routing rules. For the broader stack architecture, see building a RevOps tech stack from scratch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is implied consent enough for B2B SMS outreach?

Probably not. Federal TCPA requires prior express written consent for marketing SMS to any number, full stop. Several state-level statutes (Florida FTSA, Oklahoma TCPA, Washington CEMA) explicitly extend protections to B2B numbers. Plaintiff firms have built a cottage industry around B2B SMS suits. The safest position in 2026 is treat SMS as opt-in-only, capture timestamped consent on a form, and never cold-text a number that was scraped or enriched without explicit consent for SMS specifically.

What happens if we skip A2P 10DLC registration?

Two things, both painful. First, your throughput collapses to roughly 75 messages per day before carriers start filtering aggressively, and most messages will silently drop. Second, carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) levy unregistered-traffic surcharges that can hit $0.005 to $0.05 per message on top of base rates. Practical effect: a 5,000-message campaign costs an extra $25 to $250 in penalties and 60-70% of recipients never see the message. Registration takes 7 to 14 days and costs $4 brand vetting plus $10 to $40 per campaign per month. Do it.

Can sales reps use personal phones for SMS?

No. Personal-line SMS bypasses every compliance control RevOps owns. There is no opt-out tracking, no audit trail for consent, no suppression sync, no DNC scrubbing, no 10DLC registration. If a recipient sues, the company is on the hook and you have no defense. Personal-line use also breaks attribution (sends do not flow into the CRM) and creates retention liability (texts on personal phones may be discoverable). Issue every rep a routed business number via the SMS platform and block personal-line outreach as policy.

How do we sync SMS opt-outs across tools?

Centralize the suppression list in the CRM, not in any single SMS platform. When a recipient texts STOP, the SMS tool flags the contact, fires a webhook to the CRM, and a Flow or Workflow sets a global Do-Not-Contact flag. Every outbound channel (SMS, email, dialer, marketing automation) reads that flag before sending. If your stack does not support webhook-driven suppression sync, you have a compliance gap. Solve it before scaling.

How long does A2P 10DLC brand registration take in 2026?

Standard brand vetting through The Campaign Registry runs 1 to 3 business days. Campaign approval adds another 5 to 10 business days, with some verticals (debt collection, lending, healthcare) routinely flagged for additional review. Plan 7 to 14 days end to end for a clean registration. Enhanced vetting (required for premium throughput tiers) adds another 3 to 5 days. Build the timeline into your launch plan: do not assume you can register and send the same week.

Should we track SMS in Salesforce campaigns or as activities?

Both, but for different purposes. Log individual SMS sends as Tasks or a custom SMS Message object on the Contact or Lead for activity history. Tie campaigns to Salesforce Campaign records for attribution and reporting. The campaign layer answers 'did the SMS campaign generate pipeline?'. The activity layer answers 'what did this rep do with this contact?'. Most SMS platforms (Salesmsg, Heymarket, Sakari) support both syncs natively. Smarter Contact pushes via Zapier or its native HubSpot connector.

What is the difference between A2P and P2P SMS?

A2P (Application-to-Person) is automated or bulk messaging sent from software. P2P (Person-to-Person) is one-to-one messaging sent manually by a human. Carriers treat them differently. A2P requires 10DLC registration, has stricter content rules, and is subject to throughput limits and per-message surcharges. P2P has no registration requirement but is limited to true manual sending at low velocity. The line gets enforced by carriers based on volume, velocity, and content patterns. Bulk-blast a campaign from a P2P number and you will get filtered and eventually blocked.

How much does B2B SMS cost annually for a 50-rep team?

Budget $25,000 to $60,000 per year all-in for a 50-rep team. Breakdown: platform subscription $6,000 to $24,000 (Salesmsg, Heymarket, Outreach SMS add-on), per-message costs $8,000 to $20,000 at 50 reps sending 80 to 150 messages per week at $0.012 to $0.018 per segment, brand registration and campaign fees $300 to $1,200, DNC and litigator-list scrubbing $3,000 to $8,000, carrier surcharges $1,500 to $4,000. Consumer-high-volume motions running ringless voicemail and 10K+ daily sends look very different, see the cost-modeling section.

Does TCPA apply to text messages sent to wireless numbers we already have a relationship with?

Yes. The TCPA does not exempt existing-customer SMS the way email CAN-SPAM exempts transactional email. Marketing SMS to any wireless number requires prior express written consent specifically for SMS, including to existing customers and existing leads. Service or transactional SMS (appointment reminders, password resets, order confirmations) has more flexibility under the established business relationship doctrine, but anything that includes a promotional element is treated as marketing. When in doubt, capture explicit SMS consent.

What is the best SMS tool for a Salesforce-based revenue org?

Salesmsg if you want a native Salesforce object model and tight CRM integration. Sales Cloud Engage if you are already on the Outreach or Salesloft equivalent and want carrier-level integration. Sakari if your team needs developer-friendly APIs to build custom workflows. Heymarket if shared-inbox SMS for AE-AM handoffs is the priority. For consumer-volume motions (real estate, mortgage, solar, debt relief) the answer is different, see the tool-selection section.