Texting customers legally
Two separate things have to be right: the carrier registration, and the consent.
Registration (10DLC). If you send application-to-person messages from a standard US ten-digit number — anything sent by software rather than typed by a person — you need a registered Brand and Campaign. Unregistered A2P traffic on local numbers is now generally blocked rather than throttled, so the failure mode is not slow delivery. It is silence, and you may not notice.
Consent (TCPA). Marketing texts need prior express written consent. Transactional messages — "on my way," "your appointment is tomorrow" — need only prior express consent, a materially lower bar. The two streams must stay separate, because a marketing message riding on transactional consent is exactly the violation the rule exists for.
Statutory damages run per message, which is what makes this dangerous for a one-van business. One mistaken campaign to a few hundred numbers is not a small number.
Registering, as a sole proprietor
You do not need an EIN. A Sole Proprietor Brand registration is available to US and Canadian individuals without one.
The trap, and it is a real one: a mobile number can be used for the one-time-password verification step a maximum of three times, and that is a lifetime cap held at the registry level. Burn all three on test registrations and that number cannot be used again. Do it once, carefully, with the details you intend to keep.
If you have an LLC and an EIN, you register as a Standard or Low-Volume Standard Brand instead, which carries higher throughput and slightly more paperwork.
What you will need: legal name, address, mobile number for verification, and a description of your messaging use case, plus sample messages. Write the samples as the messages you will actually send — they are reviewed, and a mismatch between what you registered and what you send is its own problem.
The two consent streams
| Transactional | Marketing | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | On my way, appointment reminder, invoice ready, quote sent | Promotions, "book your spring detail", referral pushes |
| Consent needed | Prior express consent | Prior express written consent |
| How you usually get it | Customer gives you their number to book a job | An explicit checkbox or reply-to-join, with disclosure |
| Quiet hours | Practically, still respect them | 8am–9pm recipient local time |
| Risk if wrong | Lower | High — statutory damages per message |
Keep them separate in your data, not just in your head. A single "texts OK" flag is how a transactional list becomes a marketing list six months later, when someone decides to send a promotion to everyone.
The rules that catch small operators
Time zone, not your zone. Quiet hours are the recipient's local time. If you work near a boundary, 8:30am for you can be 5:30am for them.
STOP has to work, and so does HELP. Opt-outs must be honoured through any reasonable method — not only the exact keyword — and there is a defined window to process them. If someone replies "please stop texting me," that is an opt-out.
Identify yourself. The recipient should be able to tell who is texting from the message itself. "On my way!" from an unknown number is both a compliance problem and a confused customer.
No SHAFT content. Sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco. Not usually a risk in these trades, but it is a carrier-level rule and it applies to the whole campaign.
Keep consent records. When, how, and what they agreed to. This is the thing that is impossible to reconstruct later and trivial to capture at the time.
Why the on-my-way text is worth the setup
It is the single highest-value automated message in either trade.
The most common honest cause of a customer not being there is that they forgot or lost track of time. A message on departure removes both. It also pre-empts the "where are you" call, which is the most annoying interruption in a working day for both of you.
Pair it with a booking confirmation and a day-before reminder and you have the reminder half of the deposits-plus-reminders combination that vendors credit with dropping no-shows from the 15–25 percent range to under 5 percent. What a no-show actually costs.
What Rigsheet does with this
Rigsheet builds the texting flow around the split: transactional messages — confirmation, day-before reminder, on-my-way, invoice — as the default path with consent captured at booking, and marketing as a separate, separately-consented stream. 10DLC registration is kicked off during onboarding, branching on whether you have an EIN.
SMS is included in the plan rather than billed separately, which is worth naming because it is not the norm — ZenMaid, for one, bills SMS separately on top of a tier price and a per-seat charge. Rigsheet is from $4/month — four tiers up to $39, flat. Full comparison.
This is general information, not legal advice. TCPA and carrier rules change, and enforcement is real. Read the FCC's own material, check with your messaging provider about their current registration requirements, and if you plan a marketing campaign to a list you did not build with explicit written consent, get advice first.
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About Rigsheet
Rigsheet is a job app from Baker Ventures LLC for one-to-three-person mobile service businesses: mobile auto detailers and residential cleaners first. Scheduling with drive-time gaps, quotes with vehicle and home-size pricing, deposits, "on my way" texts, before and after photos, invoices, and automated review requests. Plans start at $4 a month, with unlimited jobs, customers, quotes and invoices on every tier and no per-user fees.
It exists because the alternatives charge a solo operator team prices. A one-van business is not a small version of a ten-truck business, and pricing built around seats and add-ons makes that mistake expensive. The pricing calculators and operator guides on this site are free and need no account.
Questions and answers
Do I need to register to text my customers from a business number?
Yes, for application-to-person messaging over a standard US ten-digit long code. Unregistered A2P traffic on local numbers is now generally blocked rather than throttled, so an unregistered business texting flow does not degrade - it simply does not arrive.
Can a sole proprietor register for 10DLC without an EIN?
Yes. A Sole Proprietor Brand registration is available to US and Canadian individuals without an EIN. Note the hard limit - a mobile number can be used for the one-time-password verification step a maximum of three times as a lifetime cap, so do not burn attempts on test runs.
Do I need written consent to send an on-my-way text?
Transactional messages such as an on-my-way notification generally require prior express consent, which is a lower bar than the prior express written consent required for marketing texts. Keep the two streams separate so a marketing message never rides on transactional consent.
What are the quiet hours for business texts?
Marketing messages are generally restricted to 8am to 9pm in the recipient's local time. Time zone matters - a 8:30am send from your zone can land at 5:30am in theirs.
What happens if I get TCPA wrong?
Statutory damages run per message, which is what makes it dangerous for a small business - a single mistaken campaign to a few hundred numbers is not a small number. Keep transactional and marketing consent separate, honour opt-outs promptly, and keep records of consent.
Rigsheet. “Texting customers legally.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 6, 2026. https://rigsheet.bakerventuresstudio.com/guides/texting-customers-legally/