SMS Quiet Hours: What Time Can Sales Teams Legally Text?

Sending a marketing text at the wrong hour can be a legal violation on its own — and it has become the basis of a wave of recent lawsuits. Here's what the rules say and how to build your sending schedule around them.

The federal rule: 8am to 9pm

Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules, telephone solicitations can't be made before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. — and that applies to text messages. Three details matter:

• It's the recipient's local time, not yours. A 9am send from New York lands at 6am in Los Angeles.
• There's no weekend or holiday exception. The window is the same every day.
• Consent isn't a reliable exception. The federal rule exempts messages sent with the recipient's permission, but a wave of recent lawsuits argues that agreeing to receive texts isn't agreeing to receive them at 10pm, and courts haven't settled the question. Respect quiet hours for all marketing texts.

Some states are stricter

Several states have their own telemarketing laws with tighter windows. Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland, for example, limit marketing contact to 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the recipient's time zone, and also limit how many times you can contact the same person about the same subject in 24 hours — no more than three attempts. The statutes are written around calls; treat marketing texts as covered, and count calls and texts together.

Other states have their own windows and day-of-week rules, and these laws change. If you text nationally, the simplest compliant approach is to use the strictest window that could apply.

Building a compliant schedule

1. Send between 8am and 8pm in the recipient's time zone. That window satisfies the federal rule and the strictest common state windows.
2. Know where your contacts are. People keep their numbers when they move, so an area code is only a guess. Use a contact's address or known time zone when you have it, and default conservatively when you don't.
3. Cap follow-ups. Don't send more than three marketing attempts to the same person in 24 hours.
4. Schedule instead of sending live. Scheduled sends make it easy to hit the window in each time zone instead of blasting everyone at once.
5. Replies are different from blasts. When a prospect texts you, responding in that conversation isn't the same as a campaign message — but don't use a late-night reply as a reason to restart a campaign.

The short version

• Federal rule: no marketing texts before 8am or after 9pm, recipient's local time, every day.
• Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland: 8am–8pm, and no more than three attempts in 24 hours.
• Safest national default: 8am–8pm in the recipient's time zone, three attempts max.

Signilio lets you schedule sends and throttle volume, so campaigns can go out inside the right window instead of all at once. Talk to us about your setup.

This article is general information, not legal advice. State laws vary and change frequently; confirm the rules that apply to your recipients.