Setting a Validity Period (TTL) for SMS/MMS

Question:

• What is a Validity Period
• How do I setup a Validity Period
• Best Practices

Applies To:

• SMS API
• SMS/MMS on the Messages API

Answer:

What is a Validity Period 

A validity period (TTL) is a period of time an SMS message is intended to be valid. Vonage’s  TTL (time to live)  applies only to messages while they travel through the Vonage platform. By default Vonage attempts delivery for 72 hours. You will not see a DLR status associated with your message while it is being queued. After Vonage sends the messages to the carrier network, the carriers may still queue the messages. Each carrier has a standard validity period, which on average is 24-48 hours. 

How do I set up a Validity Period

When sending via the SMS API you can add the preferred validity period as an attribute in your API call. Please see our SMS developer documentation for more information. For the Messages API, the validity period can be specified for SMS and MMS messages. Please see our Messages API developer documentation for more information. 

Best practices

As a best practice, we highly recommend using TTL’s to ensure messages do not become stale and are sent at inappropriate times. We recommend up to 4 hours for promotional campaigns and up to 30 minutes for one-time messages. Messages with shorter validity periods will take priority over those with longer validity periods in the queue.