SMS Alerts

Deliver event notifications as text messages to your team members’ phone numbers. Critical alerts go straight to their pocket. No app required.

SMS goes only to workspace members who have personally verified their own phone number. There is no way to send SMS to external phone numbers, contact lists, or any number that hasn’t been verified by its owner.

How it works

SMS is a first-party integration powered by Twilio. API Alerts handles the delivery. No Twilio account needed.

1. Add an SMS destination to a router in your workspace
2. Choose which team members receive messages
3. Customise the message template
4. Events matching the router’s pattern trigger SMS to the selected recipients

Team members need a verified phone number on their account to receive SMS.

Event Designer

Customise what your SMS messages contain:

• Title. Optional first line of the message.
• Message. The main notification body.
• Template variables. Use {{title}}, {{message}}, {{data.name}}, and more. See the full Template Variables reference.
• Workspace header. Each message is auto-prepended with a header line showing which workspace the event came from.

SMS or WhatsApp

Team members can choose their preference: SMS or WhatsApp. By default, alerts are sent based on each member’s preference. You can override this per destination with the Enforce SMS toggle to always send as SMS regardless of preference.

Pricing

SMS is pay-as-you-go and billed separately from your subscription. It works on every plan, including Free. Each workspace has its own SMS balance that’s drawn down per message sent.

• Free starter credit. Every account starts with $25 of SMS credit. Each new workspace draws $5 from that pool (around 400 messages), so you can try SMS without spending.
• Per-message cost. Charged at the carrier rate plus a small margin. Costs vary by destination country.
• Length affects cost. Carriers split SMS over ~160 characters (or ~70 if the message contains emojis or non-Latin characters) into multiple segments, each billed separately. Keep alerts concise to control cost.
• Top-ups. Add credit to a workspace from the billing page (minimum $10). Top up $25 or more for a 5% bonus credit, $50 or more for 10%.
• Balance gate. When a workspace runs out of credit, SMS deliveries are skipped (other channels keep working). Top up to resume.

Get started

1. Open your workspace in the dashboard
2. Navigate to a router and add an SMS destination
3. Configure team member recipients and customise the message
4. Team members verify their phone numbers in account settings