Doing business nowadays means investigating every tool that lets us deliver the best product and best serve our customers and clients. APIs are great for this as they prevent unnecessary busywork and having to write the same code over and over. SMS APIs are especially useful for boosting productivity and efficiency for both you and your customers.

SMS APIs are highly useful for most applications that send or receive text messages. They’re helpful for two-step verification or one-time passwords, sending automated shipping updates, and even enabling 24/7 customer support. SMS APIs are integral for incorporating phone networks into your digital organization.

If you’re investigating SMS marketing and messaging via API for the first time or want to upgrade your existing marketing stack, here are 10 SMS APS worth a look!

1. Twilio SMS API

We’ll start with the most obvious SMS API. Twilio SMS API is by far the best-known and most widely-used SMS API on the market, thanks to its versatility, flexibility, functionality, and ease of use. Twilio supports SMS messaging in over 180 countries, and it can also be used to send Facebook and WhatsApp messages, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and even Google Business messages. It’s not just a one-way street, either, as users can also text you back.

Twilio’s active, enthusiastic user base also means there’s more than ample support for any issue you’re likely to run into. A vibrant community, excellent tech support, and world-class onboarding materials combine to help developers integrating SMS get to market as quickly as possible.

Last but not least, the Twilio SMS API lets you combine the reach of SMS marketing and messaging with the best that a modern digital marketing suite has to offer, including in-depth insights into open and engagement rates and delivery status, among other things, all of which can be monitored in real-time.

2. Vonage SMS API

Vonage SMS API is another SMS API that lets you both send and receive SMS messages. It also enables you to send rich SMS messages, which means you can embed multimedia content in your SMS messages without them being included as attachments. This alone is reason enough to explore Vonage if you’re working with SMS marketing, as it greatly enhances the likelihood of your promotional materials being seen.

Like Twilio, Vonage is one of the most popular and widely used SMS APIs available. Many of the advantages of Twilio also apply to Vonage. They also have a frictionless onboarding process, even if you’re not the most experienced developer on the planet. Vonage also has a vibrant, thriving community of developers using their products. Any problem you’re likely to encounter is almost guaranteed to be quickly answered virtually.

3. TextBetter SMS API

Landlines aren’t dead, despite virtually everybody having a portable phone on them at all times. Despite how far they’ve come, mobile phones still aren’t entirely reliable, for one thing. The sound quality of landlines tends to be consistently higher quality, as well. Some organizations also benefit from having a central number, even if each individual has their own contact number.

Many don’t even consider a landline at this point, though. Younger customers who’ve had a mobile device since infancy use SMS for everything. Sometimes, they’re even texting landlines, unbeknownst to the receiver. TextBetter SMS API offers the best of all worlds. It brings together SMS messages, cellular devices, landlines, and email under one umbrella. It also supports deep, detailed analytics like Twilio. It’s a simple, straightforward SMS API that’s still powerful and customizable enough to meet your SMS marketing needs.

4. Telnyx SMS API

APIs are an essential component in any automation workflow. This means that AI integration is an important and growing aspect of SMS APIs. Telnyx SMS API is built to integrate with AI chatbots and automation tools, freeing up your sales and marketing teams to focus on more important tasks that require a human touch.

Telnyx SMS API has several other powerful, useful features that make it worthwhile. The ability to queue messages, for example, is a simple but essential feature for an automated marketing workflow. Advanced and detailed metrics are another good feature, giving your sales and marketing teams the same detailed insights as any other digital marketing campaign. You can even send your SMS messages from a pre-existing number in case your customers, users, and audience are more used to receiving messages from a particular number. Their support for international calling seals the deal.

5. Plivo SMS API

Plivo SMS API is explicitly built for SMS marketing — and global SMS marketing at that. It supports both 10DLC (10-digit long-distance code) and the current standard for international application-to-person (A2P) messaging. It also offers built-in Unicode and GSM in case you’re communicating with users in an alphabet other than English.

Long message concatenation is one final feature that will serve marketers well, as it condenses longer messages into a single SMS message rather than breaking it up into multiple. This way, your audience is guaranteed to see your whole message if they’ve opened the SMS message.

You’ll know if they have, too, as Plivo supports real-time notifications and analytics. Add in message queuing and the ability to receive as well as send SMS messages, and you’ve got a powerful international SMS messaging solution through a single API with Plivo.

6. Messagebird SMS API

Here’s another Swiss Army SMS API. The Messagebird SMS API supports everything from SMS and WhatsApp messaging to support for voice calls and messages. It’s intended to be the cornerstone of an omnichannel marketing hub, so it even offers some more obscure features, like the ability to send Direct Messages on Instagram or even reach customers via Google Maps.

Best of all, it can all be done without writing a single line of code. If you’re looking for a powerful, fully-featured omnichannel marketing solution with a best-in-class SMS API, check out Messagebird.

7. RingCentral Programmable SMS API

RingCentral provides a wide range of programmable communication services, spanning voice, team messaging, video, SMS, and other formats. Their Programmable SMS API enables you to automate the SMS texting of individuals across global networks.

RingCentral’s SMS API can support bulk messaging — it can handle up to 10,000 unique messages with a single API request. Other features include embedded multimedia formats, built-in opt-in/opt-out, and compliance features, making it a choice to consider as a robust customer messaging solution. In 2018, our community voted RingCentral as the top public API, so that’s saying something.

8. Bandwidth SMS API

Bandwidth SMS API found a clever way around the bottleneck that tends to drive up SMS API pricing. They own and operate their own network. This means you can get much of the functionality of the best SMS APIs at a fraction of the price. It’s still easily implemented and integrated with other collaboration environments. It also works well for international sales and marketing, as it supports over 90% of countries on Earth.

9. Clicksend SMS API

Clicksend offers another SMS API that does so much more. Like Messagebird and RingCentral, Clicksend provides a full business communication suite, supporting everything from SMS to email to even direct mail. It’s another API that is unbelievably useful inside an omnichannel marketing toolkit. If you’d like the ability to handle everything from sending SMS, MMS, rich media to faxes, you should try out Clicksend.

The wide variety of functionality and features alone doesn’t make Clicksend worth mentioning, though. It’s also well-known for being one of the more reliable networks on our list. They even have a 100% uptime SLA guarantee!

10. SimpleTexting SMS API

SimpleTexting SMS API is another SMS solution that is simple and straightforward but more than enough for a lot of businesses’ SMS needs. It offers support for SMS and MMS campaigns, for starters. It can both send and receive SMS messages, as well, including from a pre-existing number. You can also configure autoresponders, send out batch messaging, and its real-time analytics are also hugely useful.

The ability to quickly search API transactions might be SimpleTexting’s greatest feature, though. You can look up particular API calls to check their status or look up details contained within the API call.

Other SMS APIs

Did we forget an SMS API? Please leave a comment on this post below, and we’ll consider adding it to this list when we update this post in the future!

Final Thoughts on SMS APIs

Madison Avenue execs in the 20th century would’ve sold their stakes in the Empire State Building for even a small percentage of the power of SMS marketing. The ability to reach the right person at the exact right moment, giving them exactly what they want, can be unbelievably powerful — if handled correctly.

As with virtually every other form of marketing, including hyper-detailed digital marketing, you’re almost always competing with the rest of the world, not to mention chronic burnout from incessantly being bombarded with marketing messages. SMS marketing is a little different, though. Most of us carry our phones with us, usually everywhere we go. There are fewer obstacles to overcome, meaning you’re more likely to reach your audience when they’re most receptive and likely to become customers. Choosing the right SMS API sets you up for success in your SMS marketing campaigns!

Connecting with your audience via their mobile devices can be unbelievably powerful in other ways as well. Because SMS APIs aren’t just useful for marketing — they’re commonly used for cybersecurity to power functions like two-factor authentication and SMS authentication, among many other applications.

With SMS messaging so prevalent, you don’t want to have to write the same code repeatedly. Not only is that not productive, but it also greatly increases the likelihood of errors both inside and outside an organization. SMS APIs remove all that, so you can outsource SMS functionality and focus on delivering excellent code, products, and customer service to your users.