Standard opt-out keywords and advanced alternatives for USA and Canada

All mobile communications in the USA and Canada are required to follow prescribed “opt-out” keywords. There are five required keywords, and they are:

• stop
• unsubscribe
• cancel
• end
• quit
• revoke
• opt-out / optout

Additionally, as the flow of communication increases, we have found that it is always best to look for “advanced alternatives” to these standard keywords.  These alternatives are highly recommended to ensure your campaign is accommodating misspellings, subscriber sentiment (including emojis) and alternate languages if applicable.  Some alternatives may become mandatory in 2026-7.  Understanding and implementing this in your platform is more than being compliant, it helps you understand your customer and  helps to retain subscribers who need help.  Are you sending too many messages? Are your recipients still at that same number?  Monitoring this inflow of messages keep your campaigns healthy and can prevent legal woes.  

Working with input from several leading brands and carrier partners in the industry, the Sinch Compliance Team has created a Standard opt-out keywords guide so that you are able to react quickly to and interpret the intent of your subscribers when they want to “opt-out”.

As a summary the proposed opt-out enhancement "Guide" expands standard SMS compliance beyond the mandatory keywords (STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT and REVOKE) by recognizing a comprehensive set of alternate opt-out expressions, common misspellings, typographical errors, keyword variations, embedded opt-out requests within longer messages, alternate language support (including Spanish), emojis, and polarized or profane recipient responses where the intent to opt out is clear. This approach is designed to improve suppression accuracy, ensure recipients are promptly removed from messaging programs regardless of how they express their request, and reduce compliance risk by interpreting opt-out intent rather than relying solely on exact keyword matches.

Take a look at the Sinch SMS Product page to learn more about our SMS products, or click here to sign up to our self-service portal and get started today.