Understanding MMS image and GIF best practices

You will learn

Learn best practices for sending images and GIFs in text messages so that they display nicely to recipients.

Why follow MMS best practices?

A variety of factors affect how an image or GIF looks on a recipient’s phone, including the wireless carrier, type of phone (iOS or Android), and the phone version.

By following MMS best practices, you can maximize your chances of the media looking good for all of your recipients.

Before you begin

When you add an image or GIF to a text message, the message automatically turns from an SMS into an MMS.

Please note the following about MMS messages:

• You cannot change the position of the image in an MMS, and it may appear differently on iOS and Android devices.
• MMS is only available for certain countries and sending number types.
  • United States: toll-free numbers and short codes.
  • Canada: toll-free numbers.
  • Australia: long codes.

If the recipient’s country or your sending number does not support MMS, the message is sent as SMS without the image or GIF.

Supported media types

Klaviyo supports the following media types for MMS messages:

• PNG
• JPEG
• GIF

MP4 videos cannot be uploaded as images. WebP images must be converted to a supported image type before sending. You can upload a non-animated WebP file and select Continue to have Klaviyo convert it to a PNG file. Animated WebP files cannot be converted.

Klaviyo's automatic image compression tool can reduce the file size of PNG and JPEG images. It does not compress GIFs.

PNG vs. JPEG

Both PNGs and JPEGs have their own advantages and disadvantages:

• PNGs:
  • Use lossless compression, which preserves image data during compression.
  • Can still lose detail when resized or look blurry when enlarged.
  • Can have transparent backgrounds (although this is not recommended for MMS images).
• JPEGs:
  • Can be resized easily.
  • Use lossy compression, which discards some image data and can reduce quality.

In short, use PNG when possible. If you have a larger-sized image that you need to make smaller, use a JPEG.

File size limit

All images and GIFs must be under 600 KB.

If the file size is larger than 600 KB, the image or GIF may be compressed and distorted due to carrier constraints. Keeping your media under 600 KB helps reduce this risk, but carriers and devices can still change how it appears.

Further, if a message has an image or GIF exceeding 600 KB, the message may not be delivered.

Ratio

Your images and GIFs should not be overly wide or tall. Phones adjust multimedia to fit the width of the text message, so a ratio exceeding 9:16 (or 16:9) may look distorted.

Generally, images and GIFs can be in any of the following formats.

As for which to choose, portrait tends to be the best option, followed by square. Portrait-sized media look good on most devices. However, devices can still crop portrait media, so keep important text and images away from the edges.

GIF length

GIPHY recommends making your GIFs 6 seconds or less.

Best practices

There are a few dos and don’ts for creating images and GIFs for MMS. If you don’t follow these best practices, your image can appear differently than you intend or look low quality.

Dos

Check that your image or GIF has:

• High color contrast
  Ensures the image on top and its background are distinct from each other, so the image doesn’t look blurry or as if it’s one solid color.
• High gradient contrast
  If there’s a gradient, make sure the colors in the gradient are not too close to each other. Otherwise, it might appear like a solid-color image.

Don’ts

Do not include any of the following in your images or GIFs:

• Transparent backgrounds
  Within the message thread, the transparent background looks to be solid, with a random color selected as the background. Thus, recipients won’t see your image the way you intended, and it may look blurry or like a solid-color image.
• Borders
  Some iOS devices cause borders to appear off-center from the image.
• Opacity transitions (GIFs)
  There are 2 reasons for avoiding opacity transitions: they may show as random colors and can result in a larger file size.

Additional resources