What Churchteams Learned From Switching 10DLC Providers

For a software platform that relies on text messaging, a 10DLC Campaign rejection isn't just a compliance problem.

It can become a customer experience problem, a support problem, and, when approvals remain stalled long enough, an operational problem.

Churchteams experienced that firsthand.

The church management software provider had successfully supported business texting and navigated 10DLC registration for years. But when Campaign requirements tightened in 2024, a portion of its customers suddenly became much harder to register.

Campaigns were rejected. Churchteams made the requested corrections. They resubmitted—and were rejected again.

What followed was months of troubleshooting without the answers the team needed to actually solve the problem.

Eventually, Churchteams decided the issue wasn't simply the Campaigns. It needed a different kind of messaging provider.

We sat down with Churchteams Co-Founder and Software Architect Mark Horan to talk about what went wrong, why the company chose Telgorithm, and what changed after making the switch.

When 10DLC Registration Gets Stuck in a Loop

Churchteams provides church management software that helps churches and nonprofits manage, track, and communicate with their congregations and visitors.

Texting is central to that experience, supporting everything from guest follow-up to automated workflows. So when 10DLC Campaign approvals began stalling, the impact went well beyond registration.

Churchteams wasn't new to the ecosystem, either. The company had become a Campaign Service Provider (CSP) early in the 10DLC rollout, giving its team greater visibility and control over customer registrations.

The problem emerged as Campaign requirements became stricter in 2024.

“We would submit a campaign, we would get a rejection on it and we would, to the letter of the law, do what the rejection was saying in terms of corrections... But still on resubmitting that, we still could not get it approved.”

The bigger frustration was what happened next.

Churchteams couldn't get enough information from its provider to understand why corrected Campaigns continued to fail. Mark described the experience as an “endless loop” of submissions, corrections, and rejections.

After a couple of months, the situation had become untenable.

What Churchteams Looked for in a New 10DLC Provider

Churchteams researched multiple messaging providers before choosing Telgorithm.

10DLC expertise was the primary draw. The team wanted a provider that understood the registration ecosystem deeply enough to help when the normal process didn't work—not simply provide an API for submitting Campaigns.

Telgorithm's Smart Queueing and other platform capabilities were additional advantages, but Mark says the difference became clearest once the migration began.

“As soon as we switched to Telgorithm things were just completely different from day one. It was a night and day difference.”

One of the Campaigns Churchteams had struggled to register was approved shortly after the transition.

More importantly, the team finally had a path forward when something wasn't approved.

If a Campaign was rejected, Telgorithm could help Churchteams understand the reason and determine what needed to change. If a rejection appeared to be incorrect, the team could work upstream with the DCA to investigate and resolve it.

For Churchteams, that advocacy changed the nature of the provider relationship.

“We could tell right away that we had made the right choice and that we had a partner and someone who would advocate for us in this process.”

Why CSP Ownership Mattered

There was another important point of alignment between the two companies: Churchteams wanted to maintain its role as a CSP.

Becoming a CSP had already given Churchteams greater visibility into its customers' Brands and Campaigns. Rather than asking the company to give up that control, Telgorithm supported the model.

Mark points to that decision as an important part of the relationship because it gives Churchteams greater ownership of its messaging operation and helps reduce provider lock-in.

For other ISVs evaluating 10DLC providers, that's an important consideration.

The question isn't only “Can this provider register my customers?”

It's also: How much visibility and control will my platform retain over those registrations? And what happens if something goes wrong?

Was Migrating Messaging Providers Difficult?

For an established ISV, knowing that another provider may be a better fit doesn't make switching easy.

Churchteams had existing customers, Campaigns, messaging workflows, and technical infrastructure to consider. Any migration needed to solve the registration problem without creating a new operational one.

Telgorithm and Churchteams started by mapping out the available migration paths and weighing the pros and cons of each.

On the technical side, the transition proved relatively straightforward.

“Our existing provider, the APIs were nearly exact to what Telgorithm had... We were up and running and testing in less than a week.”

When Churchteams found a few capabilities it needed that weren't available in the API, Telgorithm made enhancements to support its requirements.

The result was that the technical migration itself became one of the easier parts of the transition.

The Impact Went Beyond 10DLC Approvals

Campaign registration was what initially pushed Churchteams to look elsewhere. It wasn't the only thing that improved after the switch.

Mark says Churchteams has also experienced fewer blocked messages and better message deliverability. When an issue does occur, the team has a provider that can help investigate and work with upstream partners to resolve it.

That matters because every unexplained messaging problem can eventually become a support ticket for the software platform.

“The increased deliverability has really just been a help to our team in terms of reduced support trying to track down why texts haven't gone through.”

And for Churchteams' customers, reliable texting has a particularly tangible purpose.

Churches use those messages for guest follow-up, automated workflows, and communication with their congregations. Greater confidence that those messages will reach their destination means Churchteams can offer a more reliable experience to the organizations depending on its platform.

What Should Other ISVs Take From Churchteams' Experience?

Churchteams' story highlights a distinction that can be easy to miss when comparing messaging APIs.

10DLC registration automation is only one part of supporting A2P messaging at scale.

When everything goes according to plan, the difference between providers may not always be obvious. It's when a Campaign keeps getting rejected, a message is unexpectedly blocked, requirements change, or an upstream issue needs escalation that the provider relationship becomes much more visible.

For Churchteams, that meant looking beyond whether a provider could submit a Campaign and asking whether it could help the team successfully operate within the ecosystem surrounding it.

Years after the migration, Mark describes the result simply: “smooth sailing.”

New customers can move through Churchteams' automated registration process, the team has avoided the Campaign approval problems that originally prompted the switch, and texting-related issues consume less support time.

That's a meaningful change for a software company whose own customers expect responsive service.

As Mark put it:

“Our clients expect us to take care of them and if we don't have a provider that can help us in that same capacity it really causes an issue for us.”

Read the Full Churchteams Case Study

From Campaign approvals and migration to deliverability and support, Churchteams' experience shows what can change when an ISV has the right infrastructure—and the right people—behind its messaging operation.

Read the full Churchteams case study to see how the team turned months of 10DLC roadblocks into a more reliable, scalable messaging operation with Telgorithm.