Twilio for SMS

Scout has long offered email-to-SMS alert delivery for free. Free is good, but there are a couple downsides:

  1. email-to-SMS doesn't work some places outside the US. Some foreign carriers don't enable it by default, and in some countries email-to-SMS just doesn't work well.
  2. with email-to-SMS, texts don't always come from the same number. This depends on the carrier and/or phone. It's annoying because your alerts don't appear in a single thread.

Given how critical Scout's alerts are, it was time to level-up our SMS deliverability.

Today we're offering Twilio integration for text notifications as an alternative to email-to-SMS. The gist is:

But, what about FREE?

Email-to-SMS is still available, and still free. Use whichever suits your needs - now you have the choice.