We are a mobile app that uses Twilio for phone number verification.
And experiencing a small percentage of our user base getting their SMS very slow (over 2 mins).
Right now we have ~100 Twilio phone numbers which we use in a round robin chain format (so we don't hit any API limits).
Does the area code of the Twilio phone number that sends the SMS affect delivery speed? If so, we can buy a phone number in each area code and sent user's their verification SMS from a Twilio number in the exact same area code.
Here is an example of a delivery that took several minutes:
Twilio developer evangelist here.
The area code of a Twilio number should not affect the delivery speed at all. If you are concerned about this then I recommend you get in touch with Twilio support and send them some of the message SIDs you're worried about. They can track down why there might be delays with the carriers.
Just as a note, you don't need to do the round robin yourself. Take a look at Twilio's Copilot. It allows for geomatching (on an international basis) and also gives you sticky sender so that users will always receive messages from the same number.
Related
I have had a couple of customers wondering if they can use their own phone numbers to send out SMS using Twilio.
I am wondering if this is possible?
What are the carrier charges in this case and do I need to verify this number before enabling this functionality for an individual user?
The number you want to send messages from (or to) needs to be controlled by Twilio. However, it is possible to port your number from your current provider over to Twilio and thus give Twilio control over that number. This is possible, at least in some countries.
This support article here describes how this can be done for US numbers.
I would like to check if a set of US numbers are SMS capable - the customer would like to have both SMS and voice on the numbers and I'd like to know if this is possible before porting the numbers to Twilio.
I tried the LookupAPI but that does not seem to give me this information.
I then sent a SMS to the number to see if the SMS is delivered and I get a delivered status in the Twilio API, which in theory would mean that the number is SMS capable, but I'm not sure if this test is conclusive.
Is there any other way I could determine the number capabilities without owning the number?
All US numbers ported over to Twilio support both Voice and SMS.
I am working on an SMS-based service that parses incoming texts and sends a response, building on top of Twilio. I am concerned about a possible ddos which would result in increased costs. Is there a way of preventing this or limiting the number of times a user can send SMS without you being charged? I am based in Australia, so some of the alternatives to Twilio are not available with local numbers.
You can monitor inbound activity and if you see a massive influx, you can remove the webhook, as detailed here, which will prevent anymore SMS inbound toward your account.
Is there a way to block incoming SMS on my Twilio phone number?
I'm setting up a chatbot for Whatsapp using Twilio. My question is how can I set a limit on number of messages I can send in a day? It's for my protection, so that if some bug would send over a million messages then Twilio would make me bankrupt.
Heyoooo. 👋 Twilio Developer Evangelist here.
To my knowledge, it's not possible to limit the sent messages on the Twilio side. To set a hard limit you'd have to count and keep track of the sent messages on your end.
There are a few things that you can do that may help already.
Disable auto-recharge
If you're worried about going bankrupt disable auto-recharge for your project. This way you can't just send millions of messages in case your application goes wild.
Set up usage warnings
Additionally, you can set up usage triggers that will send a webhook to a URL you define if your app hits a certain threshold value. This URL could act like kill-switch to really shut everything down after x sent messages.
FYI, Twilio protects you of loops already
To protect your project, messages cannot be sent more than 15 times in a 30 second window between your Twilio phone number and another number. Doing so may trigger a 14107 warning that your message rate has been exceeded.
In case something goes wild Twilio will stop you from sending messages.
I hope that helps. Let me know it goes. :)
in theory would it be possible for a high volume sender to use only one phone number?
For example, would it be possible for a company like Amazon, who sends out a text when a package is delivered, to send all of their SMS' from only one phone number, or are there API limits?
Twilio evangelist here.
This is possible by using a short code. Sending high volumes of messages from a normal 10 digit (in the US) phone number, which are also known as long codes, will likely result in the carriers blacklisting that number.
With Twilio, the only limiting we enforce is rate limiting which means how many messages per second we send to the carriers. Your application can send messages to Twilio as fast as you want via the REST API.
When sending from long codes we rate limit at 1 message per second. For short codes the rate limit is 30 messages per second.
More details can be found here:
https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/twilio-basics/what-are-the-limits-on-outbound-calls-and-sms-messages-per-second
https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/sms/can-my-twilio-sms-messages-be-blacklisted-as-spam
Hope that helps.