The reality is, A2P is simply an industry term that often causes confusion.

It's often associated with registration for text messages so that messages don't get blocked by the carriers.

In fact, A2P are types of text messages. The good news is, all messages sent out of MessageDesk are considered A2P messages.

In this article, we'll go over the 2 different types of text messages and what they mean to you.

P2P stands for person-to-person or peer-to-peer text messaging.

This is the normal texting (including group texts) you do with friends and family back and forth using your personal phone.

Carriers aren’t dramatically changing their delivery standards for these types of messages in 2021. This is because P2P messages get sent and received in relatively low volumes.

These texts are:

A2P (application-to-person) messaging refers to texts that get sent using text messaging software.

These messages typically originate from a business or organization. A2P messages can include text alerts, two-factor authentication messages, sales and marketing promotional messages.

A2P messages are:

There are a vast amount of benefits to using A2P messaging as opposed to P2P messaging.

This includes:

If you are a business or organization that wants to use text messaging, you should be using A2P messaging. Remember, any message sent out of MessageDesk is already an A2P message.

With A2P messaging, you will just need to make sure to register your business so that the carriers can verify your traffic.