MMS sizes and limitations

Bird enables you to send and receive MMS messages, including multimedia content, to and from a selected group of countries. Currently, you can only send MMS within the US and Canada.

Messages parts and message sizes

MMS is never segmented or broken up into parts, and they do not have catheter limits as SMS. However, MMS and their media files are subjected to size limitations that vary according to the receiving country and networks.

The information below is intended to ensure deliverability across all supported networks in both the USA and Canada. You may be able, on specific networks, to terminate bigger messages but that is not guaranteed

Limitations

• An MMS message can carry up to 10 media attachments

• MMS media URL should be publicly accessible and respond within 5 seconds

• The total maximum file size of an MMS, including all its media attachments, is 900 KB

• The maximum file size (after re-sizing, see below) for any given attachment is 600 KB

• Only certain file types are accepted (see a full list below)

Resizing

Bird CRM supports resizing images and gifs, if you submit a file that is too big (up to 5 MB), we will try to reduce its size to ensure it can be delivered

Re-sizing is a best-effort attempt at striking a balance between quality and size.

Sometimes, it may fail to reduce the size of media to a level that all carriers can accept, and sometimes, it may impact the file quality.

We suggest that you only submit supported files to maintain control of your attachment quality and size.

Supported media types

Media	Type
Audio	audio/basic audio/L24 audio/mp4 audio/mpeg audio/ogg audio/vorbis audio/vnd.rn-realaudio audio/vnd.wave audio/3gpp audio/3gpp2 audio/ac3 audio/vnd.wave audio/webm audio/amr-nb audio/amr
Video	video/mpeg video/mp4 video/quicktime video/webm video/3gpp video/3gpp2 video/3gpp-tt video/H261 video/H263 video/H263-1998 video/H263-2000 video/H264
Image	image/jpeg image/gif image/png image/bmp
Text	text/vcard text/csv text/rtf text/richtext text/calendar

Troubleshooting

Failure related to an attachment can be reconciled by specific error or failure codes, which you can identify in your logs.

All messages failed because the attachment will record a UNSUPPORTED_MEDIA_TYPE: 14004 You can refer to our API documentation for a full list of possible MMS attachments that can help you identify the exact file that caused the issue.

Fallback

Bird only supports MMS delivery to the United States of America and Canada. When attempting to send MMS to any other country, you can control how your channel will behave by using the MMS fallback toggle. If enabled, fallback will convert MMS to regular messages, which will include a URL to the original content. Fallback SMS are charged as short messages and not as media.

US or Canadian receivers without MMS support

Sending an MMS to an American or Canadian number that does not support MMS will result in the message failing. Fallback to SMS will never be attempted, even if the toggle is active, towards any USA or Canada receiver.