Can You Text a Landline? What Happens to the SMS and How to Find Landlines in a List

What happens when you text a landline

Three outcomes are possible, in rough order of how often you'll see them:

1. It fails. The landline network has no way to deliver an SMS. From a phone, you may see "not delivered". From an SMS platform, you'll get a failed or undelivered status. On Twilio, the typical code is 30006, "Landline or unreachable carrier". More codes in Twilio SMS error codes.
2. It's read aloud. Some landline providers offer a text-to-voice service: the network calls the landline and a synthetic voice reads the message. In the UK, BT has offered a "text to landline" service of this kind. Don't build a campaign around it. A robotic voice reading your marketing text to a household is not a great experience, and it may not happen at all.
3. It's delivered to a text-enabled business number. Businesses can sign up with a provider to receive and send SMS on their existing landline or toll-free number. The voice calls still go to the desk phone; the texts go to an app. This is common with small businesses and with toll-free numbers in the US and Canada, but nothing in the number tells you it's been done.

So for any list of personal contacts, assume a landline won't get your text.

Why it matters for SMS campaigns

Texting landlines isn't just wasted effort:

• It costs money. Many SMS platforms bill per message sent, delivered or not. Check your provider's pricing.
• It skews your numbers. Delivery rate, click rate and opt-out rate are all calculated against a list that includes people who never could have received the text.
• It can look bad to carriers. High failure rates are one of the things carrier filtering pays attention to on business traffic, and 10DLC campaigns are monitored. See prepare an SMS list for 10DLC.
• It hides a consent problem. If a landline is on your SMS list, the number probably came from a form that didn't ask for a mobile, so check how you got consent for the rest of that source too.

How to tell if a number is a landline

Outside North America: the prefix usually tells you

Many countries give mobiles their own number ranges. In the UK, mobiles start 07; in Australia, 04; in Germany, 015, 016 or 017. A numbering-plan check reads the prefix and labels the number mobile or fixed line. That's free, instant and works on a whole list. Ported numbers keep their original prefix type in most of these countries, so the label stays right.

In the US and Canada: you need a carrier lookup

In the North American Numbering Plan, mobiles and landlines are mixed within the same area codes and exchanges. A format check returns "fixed line or mobile" for most numbers, which doesn't help. And numbers move: a landline number can be ported to a mobile carrier and the other way round. See what is a ported phone number.

A live carrier lookup asks the network who serves the number today and returns the carrier and its line type: mobile, landline or VoIP. That's the only reliable way to remove US and Canadian landlines.

Try one number in the free landline or mobile checker. For the full comparison, see mobile vs landline lookup and phone line types explained.

Removing landlines from a list, step by step

1. Export the list to CSV with phone numbers as text (Excel otherwise mangles them; see validate phone numbers in Excel).
2. Validate and format. Upload to the verify page or the bulk phone number validator. Numbers that can't exist are marked invalid; the rest come back in E.164 (+14155552671) with country and numbering-plan type.
3. Remove the obvious non-mobiles. Toll-free numbers (check with the toll-free number checker), fixed-line numbers in countries whose plans separate them, and fake placeholders flagged by the fake phone number checker.
4. Run carrier lookups on US and Canadian numbers. Keep the mobiles. Decide on VoIP case by case: some VoIP numbers receive texts, some don't. See VoIP numbers in lead lists.
5. Keep the landlines for calling. A landline is still a working phone. Move those rows to a call list instead of deleting them. If you cold call in the US, scrub against the Do Not Call registry first (how to scrub a list).
6. Dedupe on the E.164 number with remove duplicate phone numbers, then import into your SMS platform.

Landlines and the law

In the US, the TCPA treats calls and texts to mobiles more strictly than calls to residential landlines, which is one more reason to know the line type of every number you contact. Texts to landlines don't arrive, but the record of how you got each number still matters. See TCPA: mobile vs landline. This isn't legal advice.

What about WhatsApp?

A landline can be registered with the WhatsApp Business app, which can verify by voice call instead of SMS. Personal WhatsApp accounts are almost always mobiles. If you message customers on WhatsApp, the WhatsApp number formatter marks landline and toll-free ranges where the numbering plan identifies them, and check if a number is on WhatsApp covers the rest.

What it costs on SimpleVerifier

• Free: 100 checks with a Google sign-in, no card.
• Pro, $39 a month: phone format checks on every row (status, E.164, country, numbering-plan type), plus Unlimited email verification*, the API and the MCP server.
• Pro + Phone, $49.99 a month: adds 5,000 live carrier lookups a month with carrier and carrier-reported line type, US numbers included.
• Starter, $9 a month: 2,500 emails a month, email only.

*Fair use: the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off. Phone lookups and API calls are not part of Unlimited.

See pricing.

More reading: validate phone numbers for SMS, is this a cell phone number, why SMS delivery fails.