Mass Text

I am over tech for a single adult ward that covers a massive area. I have been looking into ways to send out mass text to our members to let them know of activities/meetings coming up. My predecessor set up an account with Remind but I find it very limiting. Does anyone have any suggestions that they are using in their wards?

I don't have a lot of experience with sending mass texts myself, but I've heard a few people recommend Remind. Out of curiosity, what limitations are you running into?

Some of the other systems I've seen being used are Gospel Living Circles, LCR Send a Message, GroupMe, Slack, Facebook, and Twitter, but I don't think there's a silver bullet yet.

A few things to investigate:
– Can a user choose how they want to receive messages (text, email, push notifications)?
– Can a user adjust the frequency of notifications?
– Does the user have to install an app?
– Can users easily opt themselves in or out (link, phone number, QR code, etc.)?
– Is it easy for an admin to manually remove people who ask to be removed or are no longer in the ward?

The main limitation with remind is how many characters each message can be (150) seems like a lot until you need to send out a message. So what usually happens is the auxiliaries will send me a message they want sent out and I usually then have to trim them down a lot or the ones I can't I have to send it as multiple messages which isn't very smooth.

I would argue that most people don't want to read long messages as a text message, and those messages probably should be shortened to increase the chance that people will read it.

Note that SMS itself has a length limit of about 150 characters, so longer messages will be broken down on the receiving end anyway. Attached is an example text I got from my elders quorum recently illustrating the issue.

sbradshaw wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 9:19 am Attached is an example text I got from my elders quorum recently illustrating the issue.\

I wonder if the EQ recorded the talk in GL. They could have eliminated the need to text entirely.

russellhltn wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 11:17 am I wonder if the EQ recorded the talk in GL. They could have eliminated the need to text entirely.

My EQP has apparently not discovered this feature in GL yet. Or if he has, he has not felt the need to use it...

Yes!

First, you will need a Sunday School class set up containing all of the people you would like to text. In your case, hopefully it is just a case of setting up a single adults class or, better yet, this has already been established. Next, open the Member Tools App>Organizations>Sunday School and select your class. In the top right corner you should see a little SMS and email option. Click the SMS one and you are away! I use this to communicate to our ward by going through the gospel doctrine class. Oh, also bear in mind that I am in a position of leadership so perhaps this is not available to everyone. In which case I recommend trying someone from the bishopric or clerk.

Sorry what is GL?
Also that looks much different than how it gets sent through Remind. Do you know what program sent that? On remind we have it created to have 4 groups (North EQ, South EQ, North RS, and South RS) when I make an announcement I try to keep it down to 150 characters but most of the messages even with me cutting them down end op about 200 characters. (since spaces and punctuations are considered characters). So when I split up a message I have to go through the process of selecting the option of sending an announcement and selecting which group to send it to again. I have had a few times where I have sent something to the wrong group by accident because I was quickly trying to get to the 2nd or 3rd message setup. Unfortunately, with how great my skills are at cutting messages down the RS really make it difficult on theirs....

In this case GL = Gospel Library. The EQ/RS leaders can record the selected talks and the ward members will see them in their Gospel Library app, much like Sunday School has "Come Follow Me" lessons listed.

Hello everyone, I haven't been in the forum for a while now. I have a web application that currently handles mass text messages. This was created back in the pandemic and is currently in active development. It uses twilio as the service to send messages. The app is free to use and the only cost is through twilio.

https://ward-notification-pager.io

You can
- create/manage groups/organizations
- compose 1 message and send to a specific group
- schedule a message to be sent at a specific time
- compose 1 message in multiple languages and target contacts on language preferences.
- receive inbound messages directly on the app.
and many more..

List of features
https://ward-notification-pager.io/features

and FAQ
https://ward-notification-pager.io/about

There is a contact page to request more information.
https://ward-notification-pager.io/contact

Shameless Plug but I build an app to help manage this for my elders quorum. We are now using it for Relief Society and the youth programs. Would love some feedback. Connect Saints will allow you to send messages, helps manage compliance including quiet hours, stop filtering, email and sms channels currently with AI assistants for constructing messaging. Members can be part of multiple groups, full approval workflows and allows responses to be moderated through leadership. Have a look and let me know if you have any questions.

https://www.connectsaints.com

artieman1 wrote: Thu Jun 25, 2026 11:01 pm Have a look and let me know if you have any questions.

Moderator note: Any communications about the app intended to provide development feedback / issue reporting should be directly with the creator/developer. The Tech Forum should not be used as a support channel (development feedback or issue reporting) for communication with the app creator/developer. The previous post has a link to the app website. The webpage has an email address in the footer for app support. Use that for any communications for development feedback or issue reporting.