05/03/25
Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messaging are used by businesses to communicate with customers as part of their marketing strategy.
When you consider that in ‘2025, the number of mobile users worldwide is projected to reach 7.49 billion’, it’s clear why businesses are choosing to capitalise on the power of mobile messaging.
The Difference Between SMS Vs MMS
The primary difference between SMS and MMS is that the latter allows you to add multimedia files, whilst SMS is composed of alphanumeric characters only.
While SMS and MMS messaging can work well for a range of different businesses, which is right for your business will depend on a variety of factors.
When you consider that in ‘2025, the number of mobile users worldwide is projected to reach 7.49 billion’, it’s clear why businesses are choosing to capitalise on the power of mobile messaging.
When choosing between SMS and MMS messaging, you will need to bear in mind a few considerations, including:
- Your budget
- The length of the message
- Informational Vs promotional content
- Deliverability
- Send times
1. Your Budget
One of the first considerations to bear in mind when deciding whether SMS or MMS messaging is better for your business is your budget.
The Cost of SMS Vs MMS Messages
While the cost tends to vary depending on the service provider, sending bulk SMS messages is significantly cheaper than MMS. This largely comes down to the fact that MMS allows you to embellish your message with a range of multimedia elements, making them naturally more expensive.
While this price increase might not hugely impact your budget if you’re messaging on a smaller scale, when you multiply this increased cost by hundreds or even thousands of messages, MMS can quickly eat into your budget.
As such, it’s important to bear your specific budget in mind to see whether you can not only afford MMS messaging but also whether it’s a necessary cost.
2. The Length Of The Message
Another consideration to bear in mind when choosing between SMS and MMS messaging is the length of the messages you’re sending.
A large difference between SMS and MMS messages is that SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, making them better for short, concise messages.
Alternatively, MMS messages have the capacity to cope with up to 1,600 characters, but ‘your carrier…limits the MMS file size’, meaning different phone carriers can compress or even reject the file.
That said, if you know that your messages need to be more comprehensive in terms of length, then MMS might be more appropriate for your business.
While the cost tends to vary depending on the service provider, sending bulk SMS messages is significantly cheaper than MMS.
3. Informational Vs Promotional Content
Another consideration to bear in mind when choosing between SMS and MMS messaging is whether you’re sending informational or promotional content within the message.
If you’re sending informational content in your messages, such as for appointment reminders and delivery tracking, then you might find that SMS messages are sufficient for your needs.
Alternatively, if you need more creative freedom, such as sending short videos, then the more inclusive format of MMS messages might be a better option.
MMS messages also work very well for announcing sales, promotional offers, and even scannable coupons.
Whichever option you choose, be sure that you’ve taken into consideration what type of content your messages will contain.
To learn more about promotional SMS, be sure to read our blog.
4. Deliverability
You will need to consider the deliverability of SMS and MMS messages.
In short, ‘SMS deliverability is the metric that shows marketers what percentage of their sent SMS messages successfully reach recipients’, and is an important metric to consider.
Generally speaking, as SMS messaging is incredibly simple, it tends to have a higher deliverability and open rate when compared to MMS messages.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that SMS messages are highly reliable in terms of deliverability in that they’re supported by every mobile device and can be sent without cellular data or an internet connection.
MMS, on the other hand, is only supported by iOS or Android phones. As such, you may be excluding some of your customers by using MMS over SMS messaging, highlighting the importance of considering the deliverability of a message.
5. Send Times
Last, but not least, you’ll need to consider send times.
Generally speaking, sending SMS messages is much faster than sending an MMS message.
This largely comes down to the fact that the file is usually smaller, providing a simple, efficient, and easy way of reaching your target market within seconds.
On the other hand, MMS messages can take significantly longer to deliver to your customers depending on a few variables, from your SMS provider to the customer’s carrier service.
As such, if delivering information to your customers as reliably and efficiently as possible is your priority, send times is key to factor into your decision-making.
MMS messages have the capacity to cope with up to 1,600 characters, but ‘your carrier…limits the MMS file size’, meaning different phone carriers can compress or even reject the file.
We hope that this article has given you a wider perspective of SMS and MMS messaging and which one is the right choice for your business.
Every business is unique, and which performs better will often come down to your specific target market.
How We Can Help
We are Mobilesquared: mobile engagement specialists delivering the very best independent mobile market intelligence to our clients. We are the established #1 global authority on business messaging and CPaaS, with our data shaping business plans, strategy, and customer engagement modelling, for some of the world’s leading brands, mobile operators, and messaging providers.
Be sure to get in touch via telephone (01182149777) or email (info@mobilesquared.co.uk) to learn more about what we do and discover how we can help your business.
Written by Jemima, for Mobilesquared.
