A bulk campaign does not send all at once. It is queued and worked through, which is why a large campaign takes time and why you can intervene while it runs.

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The life of a campaign

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Watching progress

While a campaign runs, its row in SMS Management updates on its own — no refreshing. Progress covers how many recipients have been attempted against the total. Expand the row to see each recipient and its individual status.

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Pausing, resuming and cancelling

Stops the campaign taking new recipients. Anything already handed to the network is on its way and cannot be recalled.Credits for messages already sent are not returned. Pausing early in a large campaign is how you limit spend on a mistake, but it does not undo what has gone.
Picks up from where it stopped. Recipients already attempted are not attempted again, so resuming does not double-send.
Stops the campaign for good. It cannot be resumed; you would have to create a new campaign for the remaining recipients.Like pausing, it does not recall anything already sent.
If you spot a mistake in a running campaign, pause it immediately rather than deciding whether to pause or cancel. Pausing is reversible and stops the spend; you can cancel afterwards once you have looked.

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Why a campaign takes time

Messages are worked through in batches rather than all at once. A campaign to a few hundred recipients completes quickly; tens of thousands takes noticeably longer. This is deliberate. It keeps one large campaign from starving everything else, and it is what makes pausing useful — there is still something left to stop.

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Scheduled campaigns

A campaign scheduled for later sits as SCHEDULED until its time arrives.
Credits are checked and taken when the campaign is submitted, not when it fires. But if something changes in between, a scheduled campaign can still fail at send time. For an important scheduled campaign, check it after its send time rather than assuming it ran.

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Personalised campaigns cost different amounts per recipient

Variables are substituted before each message is measured, so a longer substituted value can push that recipient’s message into an extra part.
Size your message against the longest value you expect, not a typical one. The credits-required figure on the review step uses the message as written, so substitution can push the real total above the estimate.

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Troubleshooting

COMPLETED means every recipient was attempted. Expand the campaign to see per-recipient status — failures sit inside a completed campaign rather than changing its status.
Large campaigns move in batches, so short pauses in the count are normal. If it has not moved at all for a long time, check the campaign is not paused, and check your credit balance.
Most often credits ran out mid-campaign. Check your balance and transaction history, top up, and resume.
Pause. It takes effect on recipients not yet attempted. Anything already handed to the network will still arrive.