SMS Attribution Windows: Four Providers’ Rules Compared

The purchase can stay the same while the report changes

Suppose a shopper receives a text at noon and buys at 6 a.m. the next day. They do not click the message. Eighteen hours have passed.

Twelve-hour delivery window: the purchase is six hours beyond the stated duration.

Twenty-four-hour delivery window: the purchase is six hours before the stated duration ends.

The order is unchanged. Only the declared reporting window differs.

Assume delivery attribution is enabled, the receipt timestamp is correct and there are no other touches or code-based paths to evaluate. This worked comparison isolates one reporting choice; actual credit depends on the rest of the journey.

Compare the event before comparing the number of days

These columns are not a ranking. A five-day window beginning at one event cannot safely be treated as the same rule as five days beginning at another. The remaining eligibility and credit rules still matter.

“After the message” can mean different things

Postscript’s default examples count the window after the text was sent. Klaviyo says its event attribution window begins when the profile initially receives the message. Attentive describes rolling periods from the exact engagement time. Omnisend lets the account choose whether the window starts when the message is sent or when the contact engages.

Keep the start event beside the duration in any export or comparison. For Omnisend, the captured guide requires a click for SMS engagement; an SMS arriving on a phone is not the same event. A Postscript coupon is another important exception: the guide says it can attribute an order outside the configured windows.

A settings change can rewrite the past report

The source statements describe provider behavior, not processing times measured by Zobi. They explain why a saved export and a later dashboard may differ. Retain the export date, reporting period, account time zone, window values, start event and enabled interactions when you save a report. Note any settings update in progress.

Postscript’s different treatment also means that changing a setting does not automatically create a like-for-like before-and-after series across providers.

Attentive’s captured page gives two click defaults

The FAQ table specifies a five-day rolling click window for new Attentive customers. A later paragraph on the same captured page says purchases count for 30 days after a click by default. The settings screenshot also displays 30 days, but the later prose is a separate inconsistency, not merely an example image.

Keep both statements in the source record. The public page does not establish which value applies to an existing account. Read the actual attribution settings before using a number in a calculation.

Delivery windows differ even when clicks match

Klaviyo: its article lists these as new-account defaults and says conversion credit requires eligible activity in an enabled window. The same article says the event attribution window starts when the profile initially receives the message. Keep that statement with the click value rather than assuming every clock starts at a click. Read the definitions.

Attentive: Its named new-customer table lists five click days and twenty-four rolling delivery hours; existing customers may have different settings. Later prose on the same captured page calls thirty days the default click window. The screenshot also shows thirty days as an example, but that does not settle the conflicting prose. We use the explicitly labelled new-customer table for this comparison. Delivery attribution describes a received text with no click, and the source says that option is on by default. Read the table and both default statements.

Replay the same order across four SMS providers

Start with an example where an order comes in 18 hours after a text arrives, with no click. The order falls outside Klaviyo’s 12-hour delivery window and inside Attentive’s 24-hour window when both are enabled. Edit the timeline to see which rule changes the comparison.

Replay the order across all four providers

Save the facts needed to reconcile reports

Keep the original exports, their reporting periods and the times they were generated.

Record the enabled events, start clocks, window durations and effective time of any settings change.

Before assigning credit, check other channels, identity matches and any coupon or offer code.

Published defaults can differ from account settings. The replay checks time windows and explains documented recalculation. Actual credit depends on the full event record and provider rules. Download the dated provider rules.

Compare a declared time window

Choose the event, enter hours from the applicable window start to the purchase, and declare what you know about each provider’s settings. Use a verified account value when you have one. If the window or event enablement is unknown, keep it unknown.

Compare a timeline. The interactive tool uses only the values you enter. It runs in your browser without connecting to your account. You can download the result as a CSV.

Five days becomes 120 hours in this comparison. Fractions of an hour are accepted. A result exactly at the stated endpoint stays unresolved because these captured passages do not define endpoint inclusion. A value strictly below the duration is inside the declared time window; a value strictly above it is outside. Neither label is an attribution verdict.

Window inclusion is only one part of credit

Other eligible interactions can change the answer. Klaviyo describes default last-touch attribution across channels, with all conversion credit going to the last eligible touchpoint. Its own email-and-SMS example uses a custom one-day SMS-click window. The purchase is credited to email after the SMS click falls outside that custom window. Read the example with its settings, rather than transferring its result to every journey. Klaviyo’s cross-channel example.

Attentive describes credit to the most recently clicked message when that click falls within the configured window. With no eligible click, the conversion may go to the most recent eligible text delivery or email open. It also describes unique coupon or offer codes as a path that can attribute a conversion outside other windows. Attentive’s model FAQ.

To decide actual credit, read the complete event record alongside the original documentation. That includes any identity matching, other channel interactions, simultaneous touches or code use that could affect the order. The time comparison leaves those questions for the provider’s rules.

Keep the settings with the report

Saving an attribution report without its settings can leave a later reviewer comparing different definitions. Both providers say setting changes recalculate historical conversion data. Klaviyo says updates may take up to thirty-six hours; Attentive says historical updates may take up to twenty-four hours. Those are provider update statements, not measured processing times from this study. Klaviyo; Attentive.

For a reproducible comparison, retain the report export, export time and time zone, reporting period, event timestamps, enabled interactions and window values used. Note whether a settings change or recalculation was in progress. A later dashboard is not necessarily the same snapshot.

Use this rule comparison to explain a reporting difference or ask a sharper question. To evaluate whether texting produced additional purchases, you need evidence designed to distinguish purchases caused by the message from purchases that would have happened anyway. This tool does not estimate that effect.

What happens after the shopper replies?

A reporting window cannot tell you whether a shopper’s question was answered. Zobi keeps cart recovery and shopper replies in one running conversation. Ask to see how the reply flow works for your store, then agree separately on how you will assess the outcome. Start growing revenue.

Method, sources and downloads

This comparison reads two selected providers’ public documentation, captured on 8 November 2026. We coded new-account click and delivery durations, account-setting caveats, clock wording, documented credit rules and historical recalculation. We then compared entered elapsed hours with a declared duration. We did not access accounts, send messages or test live attribution engines.

Klaviyo’s page displays an update of 10 March 2026. Attentive’s capture displays “Updated 10 days ago”; we retain that relative label rather than inventing an exact publication date. Five days is converted to 120 hours for the arithmetic only. The captured wording does not establish exact endpoint inclusion, so equality returns an unresolved boundary.

Provider rules CSV · Versioned rules JSON · Worked time comparisons CSV · Method and source notes.

Primary sources: Klaviyo, Understanding attribution; Attentive, Configure your attribution settings and model FAQ. Recheck the original documents and the account settings before applying a recorded rule.

The four-provider documentary extension adds Postscript and Omnisend sources captured on 9 November 2026. The preserved Klaviyo and Attentive snapshots remain dated 8 November. The existing calculator retains its two-provider declared-window scope.

Download the additional coding CSV · Download its source-linked definitions. Analysis prepared November 9, 2026; original source dates remain attached to every record.

Sources and measurement context

Publisher disclosure

Zobi publishes this research and offers conversational SMS software. These source comparisons do not measure Zobi’s performance.