Delivery Rate

What is delivery rate?

Delivery rate is the share of sent messages that are confirmed as delivered to recipients' handsets, usually calculated from delivery receipts returned by mobile networks.

Why does delivery rate matter?

Delivery rate shows how much of your messaging actually reaches people. It is typically calculated as delivered messages divided by submitted messages, based on the delivery receipts that mobile networks return. A message your system marks as "sent" is not the same as one confirmed as delivered.

For businesses, delivery rate is the first metric to watch, because every other result depends on it: a one-time password that never arrives blocks a login, and a promotional SMS that is not delivered cannot convert. A single overall figure hides problems, so teams track delivery rate per country, operator, route and message type, and compare it with a baseline.

A sudden drop usually points to a degraded route, invalid or ported numbers, sender ID filtering or content blocked by an operator firewall. Providers with several routes per destination can move traffic when the rate falls.

Example

A retailer's overall delivery looks stable, but one operator in one country drops sharply after a sender ID change. Per-operator tracking surfaces the problem before customers start to complain.