One Messaging API to reliably reach 7B+ devices

Twilio Programmable Messaging API supports SMS, MMS, RCS, and WhatsApp for sending and receiving messages.

Twilio offers transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing with no hidden fees or minimum commitments. Costs vary by message type, destination, and volume. See our pricing page and monitor usage to stay on budget.

We don’t publish an official delivery rate for messaging because delivery rates vary, depending on the exact use case and message quality. Destination country and carrier, type of sender (long code, short code, toll-free), message content, compliance with local regulations, and recipient number validity can all affect delivery rates. 

To ensure high delivery rates, the Twilio platform is built on hybrid cloud infrastructure. We have wide reach with more than 4,800 global carrier connections, eight edge locations, and multiple dedicated availability zones per edge. Our dashboards and APIs help you monitor your delivery rates so you can track and troubleshoot any failed or undelivered messages.

To offer an idea of how Twilio’s delivery rates compare, we commissioned a study conducted by Forrester Consulting, which found Twilio Messaging provided a 3% increase in messages delivered when customers used Twilio.

Twilio provides tools and resources to help you meet compliance and regulatory requirements for messaging. First, we maintain up-to-date regulatory guidelines for each country to cover phone number usage, SMS, voice, and short code requirements. We offer Messaging Services, so you can bundle senders (10DLC, short codes, toll-free numbers, alphanumeric sender IDs) and apply compliance settings across the board.

We also have a Compliance Toolkit for Messaging. Compliance Toolkit uses Artificial Intelligence to proactively detect possible regulatory and messaging policy violations and prevents or reschedules their transmission so businesses can better manage their compliance obligations. See our docs for Compliance Toolkit.

Our teams are also here to help. We regularly update requirements and notify customers about regulatory changes, and provide support to navigate complex compliance requirements.

Getting started with the Twilio Programmable Messaging API is easy and straightforward. You can use our quickstart guides, code samples, and up-to-date documentation to help.

After you’re set up, Twilio sends webhooks to your system for incoming messages and  status updates, and you can easily configure your endpoints to receive and process these events in real-time. 

Twilio Messaging lets you integrate at your own pace. Start with a simple messaging use case, and then add features like advanced opt-out, message scheduling, or link shortening when you’re ready. You can also expand to other channels like WhatsApp, MMS, and RCS with the same API with minimal code changes.

The Twilio Programmable Messaging API offers a number of features to send and manage messages:

• Global senders to reach customers in 180+ countries 

• Real-time route optimization to avoid outages and latency

• Out-of-the-box Messaging Insights dashboards to monitor and troubleshoot message delivery

• Message fallback to SMS when a MMS or RCS cannot be delivered

• Short codes, toll-free numbers, 10DLC, and Alphanumeric sender IDs to send in the US and other regions

• Advanced opt-out to customize opt-ins and opt-outs 

• Message redaction to protect sensitive data

• Message scheduling 

• Inbound message routing using inbound message webhooks

• Content API to translate rich message content across channels

• MMS for long text messages

• RCS for rich content

• AI-powered real-time routing algorithms for message deliverability

• SMS pumping fraud prevention tools to block fraudulent traffic

Some common challenges that come up implementing a new messaging solution include regulatory onboarding requirements, carrier filtering and deliverability, delayed delivery or dropped messages, SMS pumping fraud attacks, and sending to invalid or opted-out numbers.

When you deploy messaging with Twilio, you can avoid these challenges with guidance on choosing phone numbers that support your use case, volume, and compliance needs. You can use compliance tools and Messaging Services to manage compliance settings at scale. And you get a platform with features to validate phone numbers, manage opt-outs, and prevent SMS fraud.

Twilio works hard to ensure that customers do not experience filtering on legitimate messaging that follows all applicable rules. We surface error codes and dashboards to identify items to troubleshoot and resolve. Deliverability Scores are available to provide an easy-to-understand overview of how your messaging traffic is performing, and guide you on how to optimize deliverability and engagement.

Our support teams are available 24/7 with SLAs for uptime and issue resolution. Whether you need onboarding assistance or fast troubleshooting, we are here to help.

When messages fail or do not get delivered, you can check the message status and error code in the Twilio Console Message Logs or via the API. With the error codes, you can identify the reason for the message failure, like an invalid number, carrier filtering, or an opt-out. 

Common reasons for message delivery failure are: inactive numbers, content restrictions, regulatory blocks, or carrier issues. 

You can handle errors programmatically by using the error codes in your application logic to retry, alert, or take corrective action. 

Twilio’s readily available Deliverability Scores help you understand how your messaging traffic is performing and how to better optimize for deliverability and engagement.

Yes. The Twilio Programmable Messaging API supports RCS, MMS, WhatsApp, and other rich media formats, so you can send images, videos, audio clips, location info, and more to create engaging conversations beyond plain text.