SMS sending often fails with "Message body is invalid"

Question

When I send SMS messages, the messages often fail to be delivered with the error: "Message body is invalid". This happens regardless of what text I include as part of the message, so it seems like the error description is inaccurate. What does this error mean?

When this failure occurs it seems like SNS attempts to retry the message over and over for hours or days, which I do not want. How do I stop these retries?

Jake · Answer

SNS has delivery policies that can give you control over the delivery rate and error handling for SNS. 
- [Amazon SNS – Delivery Policies](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-features-for-amazon-sns-delivery-policies-and-message-formatting/)
- [Amazon SNS message delivery retries](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-message-delivery-retries.html)

As for the errors, it may be worth starting here: [How do I troubleshoot mobile text message (SMS) failures in Amazon SNS?](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/sns-troubleshoot-sms-message-failures/)

SMS sending often fails with "Message body is invalid"

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