The iPhone has no built-in mass texting feature. There is no “send to a list” button in Messages, and iOS contact groups — which you can create on iCloud.com or in the Contacts app — cannot be texted as a unit from Messages. This surprises people who assume something so ordinary must be built in.
Here is what actually works, from the manual route to the practical one.
The manual route, and where it breaks
For a handful of people, Messages is fine:
- Open Messages and start a new message.
- Type each recipient into the To: field.
- Write the message and send.
This works up to roughly a dozen recipients before it becomes unpleasant, and it has a significant catch: everyone ends up in one thread, seeing each other’s numbers and replies, unless you have turned off group messaging.
To send separate messages instead, go to Settings ▸ Apps ▸ Messages and switch off Group Messaging (on older iOS versions, Settings ▸ Messages). With it off, a message to several recipients goes out as individual SMS. Remember to switch it back afterwards if you use normal group chats — it is a global setting. The full explanation is in group text versus individual texts.
What about Shortcuts?
A reasonable thing to try, and worth knowing the limits before you invest an evening in it.
The Shortcuts app has a “Send Message” action, and you can loop it over a list of contacts. It genuinely works — but each iteration opens the Messages composer and waits for you to confirm, because Shortcuts is subject to the same restriction as every app: nothing on iOS can send a text without your confirmation. You also get no templates, no personalisation beyond what you build by hand, no batching and no history.
For twenty recipients, a shortcut is a decent afternoon project. For two hundred, you have rebuilt a worse version of a dedicated app.
The practical route
What a dedicated app removes is everything around the send: the list-building, the retyping, the batching and the record-keeping.
With our iPhone app the flow is:
- Pick your recipients — an existing iOS contact group, a distribution list you saved, or a CSV you imported.
- Choose or write the message — reuse a saved template, or write it once and save it as one.
- Personalise if you want to —
{name}and{surname}placeholders substitute each contact’s own details, so each person gets a message addressed to them rather than an obvious blast. - Send in batches — large lists are split into blocks so you are not fighting your carrier’s rate limits.
- Confirm each batch in the system composer. This is the part no app can do for you.
- Check the history afterwards, and resend to any that failed with a single tap.
For anything recurring, you can schedule a send — one-off or repeating daily, on chosen weekdays, or monthly — and get a notification when it is time. And for very large targets there are Campaigns: you set the total list, a duration in days and a time, and the app works out the daily quota, reminds you each day and tracks progress, so 3,000 contacts becomes a manageable routine rather than one impossible afternoon.
Before you send to a big list
Check your plan. Unlimited texts are common but not universal, and messages to non-iPhone recipients go as SMS against your allowance. Also check the encoding trap: one emoji can turn a single message into three.
Clean the list. Malformed numbers fail silently. Duplicates mean somebody gets the message twice, which reads as careless.
Send a test to yourself first. Always. It costs ten seconds and catches the wrong template, the unreplaced placeholder and the group-thread mistake.
Make sure you are allowed to. If these are customers rather than friends, consent and opt-out is not optional.
Step by step
- Build the recipient list from an iOS contact group, a saved distribution list, or a CSV import.
- Decide individual versus group thread — for announcements, always individual.
- Write the message once and save it as a template, keeping it under 160 characters where you can.
- Add personalisation with
{name}so each message reads as though written for one person. - Send a test to your own number and read what actually arrives.
- Send in batches, confirming each one in the composer, and check the history afterwards for failures.
Questions people ask
Can I text an iPhone contact group directly from Messages?
No. Contact groups exist in Contacts and on iCloud.com, but the Messages app cannot address one as a unit. You need to add recipients individually or use an app that reads the group.
How many people can I text at once on iPhone?
Messages has no hard published limit, but carriers rate-limit heavily and large single sends often fail silently. Batches of 20–50 with pauses are far more reliable. See carrier limits.
Will everyone see each other’s numbers?
Only if it goes out as a group conversation. Individual messages hide all other recipients — there is no BCC in SMS, so separate messages are the only way.
Can I schedule a text on iPhone?
Not in Messages itself. Apps can schedule a reminder and pre-fill the message at the right moment, but you still confirm the send.
Does this use my SMS allowance?
Messages to other iPhones go as iMessage over data. Messages to Android phones go as SMS against your plan. A mixed list uses both.