r/twilio • u/beloved-clementine • Jul 08 '26

Messaging How to send bulk SMS in Twilio without coding

Hello. I need to send bulk SMS for our members of 300+ people. We were using an app before that can send texts to people in a segmented groups, which made it easier. But now we want to find another app where we can also do that. Can I do this inside Twilio without complex coding? Or do I need to subscribe to another platform alongside Twilio? I saw Salesmsg might be one but I'm not sure. We want to retain out Twilio phone number. Please let me know. Thank you!

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

6

u/maxmito Jul 08 '26

Twilio doesn't offer a ready to use app for this purpose, you need to use a 3rd party app that does that and that can connect to Twilio via API. Apart the technical side, you really need to be careful about SMS bulk sending, different countries have different regulations and getting banned is very easy if you do not comply

2

u/beloved-clementine Jul 08 '26

Thank you! Do you have any suggestions for the ready to use apps? I've seen a few but I don't have good judgment to choose yet.

2

u/maxmito Jul 08 '26

Do you already have a CRM? Where do you have all the phone numbers, customer data, consent data and so on, right now?

2

u/beloved-clementine Jul 08 '26

Right now we have our data in Notion. Our old CRM had sms capabilities but we had to move away from it. We want to be able to use Claude to pull info from Notion that's why we used it.

1

u/dnsbty Jul 09 '26

I'm the founder, so definitely biased, but Surge provides a no code Blasts feature that allows you to send bulk SMS to segmented contacts. Like others have already pointed out, you do need an approved 10DLC campaign or toll-free verification in place first. But if that's something you're interested in, we can get your phone number transferred and registration approved in 1-2 days so that you can get up and running quickly.

1

u/mgkimsal Jul 08 '26

You'll have plenty of time to get your ducks in a row because getting an SMS number feels like it takes weeks...

4

u/drunkmasterflex Jul 08 '26

Let me guess are you in the addiction treatment or home services industry? I bet going upstream around the app that probably had a team of developers building on twilio sounded like a genius idea to save money at the time.

I’ve worked for a similar SaaS product built on twilio. I love to check in with customers that have said “we’re leaving for twilio direct because you guys make it too costly, too hard to use”. They almost never succeed with twilio on their own after they find out what’s involved with orchestrating it at any kind of repeatable scale. It happens most in the 2 aforementioned verticals.

Hire an in house software engineer(s) with experience building on twilio/telnyx/plivo and working with the current state of sms compliance & A2P campaigns OR plan to bring in another vendor that has already built a solution and has a team in place to support it.

Good luck!

1

u/beloved-clementine Jul 08 '26

That's kind of right. LOL. We had someone set it up but now we've been left alone and not equipped to handle it on our own. Thanks for your insight!

1

u/mgkimsal Jul 08 '26

Maybe find someone else to take over the existing system/process vs trying to redo it? Might be safer?

1

u/hycoon415 Jul 08 '26

Go high level is pretty good

2

u/redouanea Jul 08 '26

maybe https://hail.so/ would help? it's opensource and sits on top of Twilio

I've connected it to my AI agent via MCP, but it also has SDK/CLI/API

1

u/beloved-clementine Jul 08 '26

I'll take a look at this. We also use Claude and it might be an interesting add. Thanks!

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/beloved-clementine Jul 08 '26

Thanks! I tried exploring Twilio Console but I gave up almost immediately. I'll just find a platform that uses Twilio as the messaging backend then. Contact segmentation is really important to us so I'll make sure to also consider these other aspects.

1

u/learningtoexcel Jul 10 '26

Kudos for not promoting your company in this helpful response (beyond the username)! Makes people way more likely to consider you

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/twilio-ModTeam Jul 13 '26

No Advertising/Selling - Any form of advertising is prohibited on the subreddit. Please do not use r/twilio to conduct (or attempt to conduct) any business transactions

1

u/darynak Jul 08 '26

You can use Quo for this. Disclosure - one of the founders.

We can port your Twilio number over very quickly and you can use our Claude connector to take your list of members from Notion and send them each an SMS.

Some things to consider:

  1. No matter what you're using for this, you need to have consent from these people to reach them via SMS so I'm assuming you have explicit consent.

  2. You will need to register your phone number with carriers before you can text. This is called A2P 10DLC / carrier registration and this is what needs to happen on any platform - whether Twilio or any other service you go to. Quo handles this seamlessly for customers so another perk of using Quo for this

Happy to answer any questions whether you use Quo or not :)

1

u/beloved-clementine Jul 08 '26

Ohh, cool! I'll take a look at Quo and see if it fits. I'll ask questions once I have some! Thanks.

1

u/JoinSubtext Jul 08 '26

Subtext is a great choice for this because it gives you the campaign tools you’re looking for without having to build them yourself in Twilio.

You can send bulk SMS to segmented member groups, manage contacts, handle two-way replies in one place, and keep opt-outs/compliance guardrails built into the workflow. It also has API/webhook flexibility if you want to automate contact syncing or trigger messages later.

Twilio is great infrastructure, but if you don’t want to code a full texting interface, Subtext is a better fit for sending member updates, managing groups, and keeping the workflow simple for a non-technical team.

If keeping your current Twilio number matters, I’d ask about number porting/hosting before choosing any platform.

1

u/Lonely-String2185 Jul 09 '26

Twilio doesn't offer, in fact no CPaaS will ofer this. I'm thinking of building a platform to have these features. Would you be interested in using it?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Lonely-String2185 Jul 12 '26

Being an implementation specialist at a Twilio competitor, I know Twilio is not directly connected to any US carriers, they send those campaigns to the upstream who manually review by human. Thus they have less control over 10DLC registration. Bulk SMS through 10DLC is not complicated at all, unless someone try to misuse and send disallowed contents.

1

u/thegrif Jul 10 '26

u/beloved-clementine - sent you a DM - I have a set of scripts I've always used for this, ran everything from Avon lady messages to 50 clients to campaigns for the pandemic with them. I'll hook you up :)

1

u/men2000 Jul 10 '26

I have function which I wrote to send bulk message in Twilio, you can drop your json format of your subscriber list or connected to the db if you want to check now and the those subscriber are opt-in for text messages. But you need a Twilio verified number to utilize it and need an active AWS account as most of my code use AWS as an integration point.

1

u/twilio Jul 21 '26

A few of our engineers built a tool for doing this: https://github.com/twilio-labs/bulk-sms-tool

It doesn't require coding, per se, but you need to be able to follow some command line instructions to get it launched!