Sending a commercial SMS in France is not a matter of good practice: it is a legal regime, with precise rules and a supervisory authority. That framework is poorly known, including by those who breach it without meaning any harm.
This article describes the applicable framework; it is not legal advice. For a specific case, consult a legal professional.
The principle: consent first
Commercial prospecting by SMS rests on the recipient's prior, explicit consent. This is opt-in: the person must have actively agreed to receive those messages before the first one is sent.
What that rules out, concretely:
- A pre-ticked box. Consent must follow from a positive act.
- A number obtained from a third party without the person consenting to that transfer.
- Consent given for one purpose and then reused for another.
Prior consent and its counterpart, the right to object, form the foundation of the scheme.
The STOP notice is not optional
Every commercial message must state a simple and free way to opt out. In practice that is the keyword STOP, usually alongside a short code. Replying STOP must be enough to stop the sending, with no further steps, no justification and no unreasonable delay.
A marketing message without that notice is in breach. And failing to act on a STOP request is a separate breach, stacking on top of the first.
The advertiser must be identifiable
The recipient must be able to tell who is writing to them. An anonymous message, or one signed with a name matching no real entity, does not meet that requirement — and it is in fact one of the signs that distinguishes a legitimate campaign from an attempted scam.
What this service does not allow
We should be clear about our own scope: Mon SMS Gratuit is reserved for personal, one-off sending. Advertising campaigns, bulk sending and commercial prospecting are prohibited by our terms of use.
That is not excessive caution. A free service with no sign-up can offer neither the custom sender name, nor the delivery receipts, nor the audit trail of consent that a compliant campaign requires. For professional use a paid gateway is the only defensible choice, as we set out in our comparison of free SMS versus a paid API.
If you are on the receiving end
If you get unsolicited commercial messages, two routes exist. Reporting to 33700 feeds the scheme that lets operators cut off numbers at the source; the procedure is described on our page about reporting unwanted SMS. And if a sender ignores your STOP request, a complaint to the CNIL is open to you: failing to honour an objection falls directly under the GDPR.
