Twilio is a great way to send SMS messages to your users. However, there is a problem: SMS messages suck. They are slow, unreliable, require deep understanding of segment costs and MMS upgrades, and are generally a pain to deal with. Sendblue allows you to upgrade your Twilio experience by reducing your cost & improving the customer experience for your iPhone users.

What is Sendblue?

Sendblue is a messaging platform that allows you to send iMessage and SMS on behalf of your business.

Because iMessage is internet-based, all messages have a flat rate and aren’t priced by segment. This means that the length of your message does not impact how much it costs to send, and you also don’t need to deal with formatting issues on the receiving side.

iMessage also has a much higher media size limit than SMS, which means you can send large files & high-res images (and videos) to your recipients, all for the same price as a single message.

How does Sendblue’s Twilio integration work?

Sendblue allows you to detect when a recipient has an iMessage-enabled phone and automatically switches over to iMessage to save you money and boost your delivery rate. This can be done in one of two ways:

  1. Managed Solution - All Twilio fallbacks happen from the Sendblue platform. This means that you don’t need to worry about any of the technical details, and you can just send messages as you normally would. This is the easiest way to integrate iMessage with your Twilio SMS app.

  2. Self-Managed Solution - You can integrate Sendblue’s iMessage detection into your own Twilio messaging logic. This allows you to have more control over how you send messages, but requires you to do some extra work.

Managed Solution

Sendblue’s managed Twilio integration offers many benefits:

  • Auto SMS Fallback: If a recipient has an iMessage-enabled phone, Sendblue will automatically send an iMessage instead of an SMS. This means that you don’t need to worry about detecting iMessage-capable phones, and you can just send messages as you normally would.

  • MMS Support: Sendblue will send high-res images and videos to iMessage-capable phones, and will automatically compress & downgrade to MMS for non-iMessage phones.

  • Use your own Twilio account: Have a good rate negotiated with Twilio? No worries, simply plug in your own API keys and Sendblue will take care of the rest. Saving you money every step of the way.

  • Dynamic content: SMS messages cost more for every 160 characters you send. With Sendblue you can send one messageto your iPhone users, and a different message to your SMS users. This allows you to save money by shortening your messages for SMS, but still provide a good customer experience.

  • End-to-end encryption: All messages sent through Sendblue are end-to-end encrypted, meaning that your messages are safe from prying eyes. Only the sender (you) and the recipient (your user) can read the message.

Why should I use the Sendblue Twilio integration?

You may have already noticed this, but Twilio’s delivery reporting is inaccurate, they might be reporting 95%, while only delivering 60%. That’s because when an SMS is sent, it hops through tons of different networks/providers before reaching your recipient. This means that if one of those networks is down, or for whatever reason decides that your message should be marked as spam, your message will never reach your recipient. This is why SMS messages are so unreliable.

On the other hand, iMessages have a much higher delivery rate. This is because iMessages are sent directly from your phone number to your recipient’s phone, and are only ever routed through one network.

Sendblue can increase your delivery rate by up to 400% based on our case studies. This means that you can send more messages to your users, and save money on your Twilio bill. Basically: have your cake and eat it too.

Can I use my Twilio phone number?

Yes! Sendblue can use your Twilio phone number to send iMessages. You are even able to port your Twilio number over to Sendblue, in case you want to make sure that you have a consistent phone number between your iMessage and SMS users.

What if I want iMessage and SMS on the same phone number?

With the Sendblue Dedicated plan, you are able to use one phone number for iMessage, SMS, MMS, and phone calls. This gives all your users the same experience accross all channels, and is ideal for customer support, conversational, or virtual assistant use-cases.

Will I receive the inbound Twilio SMS messages?

With the Sendblue-Managed solution, we will automatically forward all inbound SMS messages to your server. This means that you can still receive messages from your users, and respond to them as you normally would.

Is there an additional cost for the Twilio Integration?

The self-managed solution is provided without any additional cost. However, there is a cost for the managed solution to cover the costs we incur by providing it. The cost is $0.0025 per message, which is a fraction of the cost of a single SMS message.

How to enable Twilio integration?

You can enable the Twilio integration by going to your Sendblue dashboard. From there, you can click on the “Twilio” button to enable the integration. You can also reach out to us at any time to enable this fallback.

How can I get started?

If you are interested in trying out Sendblue, you can sign up for a free trial. You can also reach out to us at any time to get a demo and an enterprise quote. We’re also happy to work with hobbyists and non-profits, so if you fall into that category, please reach out to us for information about the indiehacker plan.