Dispensary text marketing: the rules, the costs, and what actually works.

This guide is general information, not legal advice.

Can dispensaries send text messages?

Yes, but not the way other retailers do. Three sets of rules stack on top of each other, and a dispensary has to satisfy all three.

The carriers. Mobile carriers set their own rules for business texting, and cannabis falls on the wrong side of them. T-Mobile's rules require message content to be legal in all 50 states and federally, which cannabis isn't, and they list cannabis as content T-Mobile won't carry. They also set a $1,000 fee per violation for illegal content, and T-Mobile's list of illegal content names cannabis, marijuana and CBD. AT&T's code of conduct bars marketing texts that promote the use of marijuana products. A state license doesn't change any of this.

The texting companies. Most mainstream texting platforms won't carry cannabis at all. Twilio, Klaviyo, Attentive, Postscript, SimpleTexting and EZ Texting all prohibit it. Twilio's policy bars cannabis businesses from texting on its platform "regardless of content," even for login codes.

The law. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and a growing list of state laws govern consent, opt-outs and sending hours for marketing texts. Your state's cannabis advertising rules can add limits on what an ad says and who it reaches.

That's why dispensaries text through platforms built for cannabis, and why those platforms are strict about what your texts can say.

Which SMS platforms work for dispensaries?

Cannabis SMS marketing runs on platforms built for the cannabis industry. The best known are Alpine IQ, Springbig, and the marketing tools inside point-of-sale systems like Dutchie and BLAZE. Most connect to your point-of-sale system, so they know what each customer buys and when they last visited. That's what makes a targeted text possible.

They have two things in common. They handle carrier registration for your texting program, and they restrict what your texts can say. On Alpine IQ and Dutchie, the business name shown in your texts can't mention cannabis. Alpine IQ's own example turns "Kush Dreams" into "KDreams."

None of them can promise that every text arrives. Be wary of any provider that does, or that offers a way around carrier filters. T-Mobile's rules carry a separate fee for filter-dodging tactics, such as swapping in new phone numbers without authorization.

Questions to ask before you sign

• Who registers my texting program with the carriers, and how long does approval take?
• Can I write my own texts, or do I choose from approved templates?
• How does the sign-up form confirm that customers are 21 or older?
• How will I know if my texts are being filtered, and what do you do about it?
• What does one text cost, for plain texts and picture texts, including carrier fees?
• Does it connect to my point-of-sale system?
• If I leave, can I take my customer list, consent records and opt-outs with me?

We're certified on Alpine IQ and run it every day, and we're fluent in Springbig and Dutchie's built-in tools. See how we manage Alpine IQ.

What do customers have to agree to before you text them?

Written consent, before the first marketing text. Under the TCPA, marketing texts sent with automated systems need the customer's "prior express written consent." Florida, Oklahoma, Maryland and Connecticut have their own written-consent laws. The wireless industry's messaging guidelines (published by CTIA, the carriers' trade group) also say customers should agree in writing to receive promotional texts. Under federal e-signature rules, an online form, a signature on an in-store tablet or a text reply can all count as a written signature, if the wording is right.

What the sign-up should say

Put this next to the phone number field, where the customer sees it before they agree:

• Your store's name.
• What you'll send (for example, rewards updates, events and offers).
• Roughly how often ("up to 4 texts a month").
• "Msg & data rates may apply."
• How to stop ("Reply STOP to cancel") and get help ("Reply HELP for help").
• That agreeing isn't a condition of buying anything.
• Links to your texting terms and your privacy policy.

Here's sample wording to adapt. Have your lawyer review it before you use it.

Check age at sign-up

Ask for a birthdate and turn away anyone under 21. California requires cannabis businesses to confirm a recipient is 21 or older before any direct, one-to-one marketing. Platforms like Alpine IQ can enforce a minimum age on their sign-up forms.

Confirm with a reply (double opt-in)

Many platforms send new subscribers a text asking them to reply YES before they're added. Federal rules don't require this step, but it gives you strong proof of consent, and Alpine IQ recommends it to reduce carrier filtering.

A number in your point-of-sale system isn't permission

Customers give you their phone number to check out or join your loyalty program. That doesn't mean they agreed to marketing texts. Consent also can't be bought or passed along: never text a purchased list, or a list from another business.

Keep proof

Save when and how each customer agreed, and the exact wording they saw. TCPA lawsuits can be filed up to four years after a text, so keep each record for at least four years after your last text to that customer. Some platforms ask for longer: Dutchie's terms say five years after consent is withdrawn or your contract ends.

Honor opt-outs fast

Since April 11, 2025, federal rules say customers can opt out "in any reasonable manner," not just by texting STOP. You have no more than 10 business days to honor it. Replies like stop, quit, end, revoke, opt out, cancel and unsubscribe count automatically. Your platform should process those instantly, so check that it recognizes all seven, not just STOP. The other risk is an opt-out that arrives another way, like a customer telling a budtender, or replying "please stop texting me." Train staff to pass those along, and check incoming replies for them. Since January 1, 2026, Virginia requires honoring a STOP request for at least 10 years.

What the FCC decided on September 30, 2026. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to update these opt-out rules. The changes take effect 30 days after the government publishes them in the Federal Register, its official daily record of new rules. After that, a business can pick one way for people to opt out and say so clearly in the text. For example, it can say they must reply with one of those seven words. If you don't pick one, opt-outs made in any reasonable way still count. For marketing texts, one opt-out still ends all of your marketing texts, not just the one program they replied to. The 10-business-day limit stays for now, and the FCC is asking whether to cut it to 7 business days. So the safe habits don't change: put "Reply STOP to opt out" in every text, and honor every opt-out right away, however it reaches you.

What is 10DLC, and do dispensaries need it?

10DLC stands for "10-digit long code": an ordinary 10-digit phone number used for business texting. The carriers require every business that texts from these numbers to register with The Campaign Registry, the central registry the carriers use for business texting. You register your brand (your business) and each texting program, which the registry calls a "campaign." Since February 1, 2025, texts from unregistered 10DLC numbers are blocked.

For dispensaries, a registered 10DLC program through a cannabis platform is the usual route. Carriers suspend short codes (the 5- and 6-digit numbers) that send cannabis content, and Twilio turns down cannabis businesses for toll-free texting. Mainstream providers reject cannabis 10DLC registrations too: Twilio's rejection notice lists "dispensary or delivery service messaging" as a cause, and a rejected campaign can't be resubmitted. Cannabis platforms register their dispensary clients themselves, under their own rules.

What registration takes

Your platform files it, but the details come from you: your legal business name, tax ID (EIN) and address, which must match your IRS paperwork exactly. Alpine IQ says registration typically takes up to 5 to 7 days. Cova, a point-of-sale company, tells stores to allow at least two to four weeks. Finish it well before a big send like 4/20.

What can a dispensary text say?

Less than you'd think, and that's by design. On cannabis platforms, the text itself is usually a short, plain notice with a link. The offer, the photos and the menu live on a landing page the customer opens after a quick check, like a PIN code or an age confirmation.

Alpine IQ goes further. For regulated businesses registered for 10DLC, it doesn't allow fully custom text messages: you choose from pre-approved templates, and the real content goes on the landing page.

Keep these out of the text and any image

• Cannabis words, slang and menus.
• Pictures of cannabis: leaves, flower, joints, smoke.
• A store name or logo that includes a cannabis term.
• Promotional words inside images, like "Sale," "Free" or "% off."
• Misspellings or code words meant to sneak past filters. They don't change what the text is about.

Every text should name your store (as registered) and say how to opt out, for example "Reply STOP to opt out."

Examples

Here's what that looks like in practice. [Store] stands for your registered texting name, and [link] for the landing page link your platform inserts.

On Alpine IQ you'd pick the closest approved template instead of writing these yourself. Before you put a discount or a free item on the landing page, check your state's rules (see state cannabis rules).

SMS or MMS?

SMS is text only. A single text holds up to 160 characters, or 70 if it includes an emoji or certain special characters. Longer texts are split into segments of up to 153 characters (67 with an emoji), and you pay for each segment. MMS adds an image and costs more per message. Alpine IQ defaults registered accounts to MMS, which it calls its highest-converting option, but the same content rules apply to the picture.

When can you send dispensary texts?

The safest window we found is 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the customer's own time zone. That fits the federal rule and the strictest state hours we found.

Federal rule: telemarketing calls and texts are limited to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., the recipient's local time. A wave of class actions over texts sent outside those hours began in 2025. At least one federal court has since ruled that the limit doesn't apply to texts customers agreed to receive, but that question isn't settled everywhere, so don't count on it.

State rules: several states set a later start or an earlier cutoff for sales calls and texts.

Some of these laws say "calls," and lawyers read them as covering texts too. Treat them as if they do.

Time zones: a customer's area code isn't always where they live. Good platforms schedule by the customer's address when they have it.

Best time to send: we haven't found an independent study for dispensaries. Test a few send times with small groups, and use your platform's option to send near each customer's usual shopping time if it has one.

How often should a dispensary text?

There's no trustworthy industry number, so be wary of anyone who quotes one. Here's what holds up:

• Several states cap sales texts at 3 in 24 hours on the same subject. That's a legal ceiling, not a target.
• Tell customers how often you'll text when they sign up, and stick to it.
• Watch your opt-out rate after every send. A spike means that text, or that pace, wasn't welcome.
• Send fewer texts to more specific groups. A lapsed customer, a new sign-up and a weekly regular shouldn't all get the same message.
• Don't let promotions and automatic messages pile up. If a customer just got a birthday text, hold the weekly promo.

What does dispensary text marketing cost?

Five things add up: the platform's monthly fee, a price per text, carrier fees, registration fees, and the discounts you offer. The discounts are often the biggest.

Price per text. Cova Software's 2026 guide puts cannabis texting at about 1 to 3 cents per SMS and 3 to 6 cents per MMS, plus carrier fees. Alpine IQ, Springbig, Dutchie and most point-of-sale platforms don't publish current prices; you get a quote, often bundled with loyalty. When you compare quotes, ask whether carrier fees are included.

Carrier fees. Each carrier adds a surcharge to every business text sent from a registered 10DLC number. Your platform either passes these through or builds them into its price.

Registration. The Campaign Registry charges $4.50 once to register your brand and $10 a month for each registered marketing campaign. Platforms often fold these, and any vetting fees, into a setup fee.

A worked example. Say 3,000 customers have opted in and you text each of them 4 times a month. That's 12,000 texts. At 2 cents per SMS, the texts cost $240 a month. Sent as MMS at 5 cents, they'd cost $600. If your platform charges carrier fees separately, they add about $42 to $60 at this volume for SMS, or $84 to $120 for MMS. Then add the platform's monthly fee. And remember that a text that runs into a second segment costs double.

Then the discount. A 20% off text to customers who were coming in anyway gives away margin on sales you already had. That's why who you text matters more than the price per text.

How do you grow your text list?

Every text you'll ever send starts with a customer opting in. The best programs ask everywhere a customer already is:

• At checkout. Budtenders ask every customer, every time. A simple line works: "Want your points and event invites by text? You can stop anytime."
• On signs in the store. A QR code, or a keyword to text ("Text JOIN to…").
• On a tablet. An in-store sign-up form with the consent wording, a birthdate field and a signature.
• On your website and online menu. A sign-up form or pop-up with the same consent wording. In our check of 96 dispensary websites, only 42% asked for a phone number.
• On receipts, bags and social profiles. Anywhere the keyword or QR code fits.

Every one of these needs the consent wording and an age check. A reason to join helps, like bonus points for signing up, but check your state's rules on promotions first.

Track your opt-in rate: customers who've opted in to texts, divided by all customers in your point-of-sale system. Measure it every month and work to push it up.

Why aren't my dispensary texts being delivered?

Carriers filter texts automatically, and cannabis content is on the list of what they block. Filtering is often silent: the text simply never arrives.

Signs of filtering

• Your platform's failed-send rate climbs.
• Clicks drop sharply on a send that looked normal.
• Customers say they didn't get a text.
• Delivery drops on one carrier but not the others.

What to do

1. Pause big sends until you know what's wrong.
2. Check your recent texts and images against your platform's rules. The usual culprit is a cannabis word, image or link.
3. Ask your platform's support team to check delivery by carrier and your registration status.
4. Fix the content before you send again. Alpine IQ warns that resending a filtered campaign from a new number is the easiest way to get that number filtered too.
5. Don't try tricks to get around the filters, like misspelled words or switching to new numbers to escape a block. T-Mobile's rules treat filter evasion as a separate violation.
6. Move important messages to email while you sort it out.

To prevent it: double opt-in, clean lists and neutral templates. Platforms like Alpine IQ can also send a contact card, so customers can save your number and see your store's name instead of a random number.

How do you know if texting is making money?

By comparing sales, not opens.

Ignore the "98% open rate." It's everywhere, and it traces back to a 2010 industry white paper. The firm behind that paper, Mobilesquared, said in 2022 that about 55% of texts are read. Standard texts don't send read receipts, so no platform can truly measure an SMS "open." When a cannabis platform reports text opens, it's counting something else. Alpine IQ, for example, counts an open when the customer gets past the verification step on the landing page.

What to track instead

• Delivery rate: texts delivered, divided by texts sent.
• Click rate: clicks, divided by texts delivered. Outside cannabis, Omnisend's 2026 benchmark report put the average for SMS campaigns at 12.39% across more than 27,000 ecommerce brands in 2025. We haven't found an independent benchmark for dispensaries.
• Opt-out rate for each send.
• Revenue per text: sales from customers who got the text, divided by texts sent.
• Lift over a holdout group, below. This is the one that tells you what texting actually earned.

The holdout test

Pick a group of customers, text 90% of them, and hold back a random 10%. Wait out your attribution window: the period after a text in which a sale still counts toward it (14 days by default on Alpine IQ). Then compare average spending per customer in each group. The difference is what the text earned.

An example with made-up numbers: the 2,700 customers you texted spent an average of $22 over two weeks, and the 300 you held back spent $19. The $3 difference across 2,700 customers is $8,100 in extra sales. Subtract the cost of the discount and the texts, and you have the campaign's real return. Small groups swing a lot, so repeat the test before you trust it.

Strict or broad? Alpine IQ, for one, offers two settings: strict credits a sale to a text only when the customer engaged with it, and broad credits it whenever the customer received it. Broad makes every number bigger. Know which one your reports use. We report strict.

Do state cannabis rules affect texts?

Yes, and they differ a lot. Cannabis advertising rules can limit who you market to, whether you can advertise prices or discounts, and what a promotion can offer. A few examples:

Whether the New Jersey and Connecticut rules cover texts customers opted in to isn't settled. If you're in either state, get a lawyer's answer before you text a price or a deal. This is a sample, not a full list, so check your own state's cannabis regulator before you launch. For ads outside text messages, see our dispensary advertising rules by state.

More questions dispensary owners ask

About the author

Matthew Dobesh founded Green Spark Media. He got his start in cannabis about fifteen years ago in a grow warehouse, harvesting, trimming and packaging product while he was in university. An MBA and a marketing career later, he's back in the industry, this time helping dispensaries grow. He's Alpine IQ certified and runs a live Alpine IQ account every day. Read Matthew's story.

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Texting and cannabis rules change and differ by state, so talk to a lawyer who knows both before you launch. Last checked September 23, 2026.