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Send text messages in Zaps

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The SMS by Zapier app is a free, built-in feature that lets you send yourself text messages. If you have a US or UK phone number, you can use this app to send yourself up to 15 messages per hour. This is a great way to receive notifications from your Zaps.

Limitations

SMS by Zapier has a few limitations:

  • You can send up to 15 messages per hour.
  • You can only send messages within the United States and United Kingdom.
  • You can only send messages to phone numbers that have been verified and are fixed to your account
  • Your message can only be up to 153 characters long. Zapier will cut off any characters beyond that.
  • If you're in the UK, Zapier will override the number that your text message comes from with a UK number.

Tip

If you need to do something that you can't do because of these limitations—such as sending more than 15 text messages in an hour or longer messages—then you'll need to use one of the many text message services available on Zapier.

1. Select your app and action event

  • Create a new action step in your Zap
  • For the App field, search for SMS by Zapier and select it
  • For the Action Event select Send SMS

Selecting the SMS by Zapier app and Send SMS action

2. Verify your phone number

If you haven't already verified a phone number with SMS by Zapier, you'll need to do that next.

  • Select Sign in to SMS by Zapier
  • In the popup, enter your phone number

Heads Up

Do not include any punctuation with your phone number; only use digits. Additionally, if it's a UK number, include the country code.

  • Choose if you want to receive a confirmation PIN by call or SMS
  • Select Send PIN
  • Enter the PIN you receive by call or text in the form
  • Select Yes, Continue

After verifying your phone number you'll receive a test message from Zapier confirming the connection.

In this example, we've entered our phone number, chosen to receive a confirmation PIN by SMS and then entered the PIN

3. Customize your message

  • Choose the number that you want to receive the message from
  • Enter the message you want to send
  • To include data from previous steps, select the icon on the side of the message field

In this example, we want to send ourselves a text message every time a new event is added to our calendar, so we include the event summary and start date from our first step in the message.

Heads Up

Messages with more than 153 characters will be cut off.

4. Test your step

  • In Test your connection, select Send Test to SMS by Zapier
  • Check that you received the text message

Note: a successful test in this case means that the message was queued, not that it was necessarily sent or received.

In this example, our test was queued successfully.

After setting up your SMS step, you can continue adding steps to your Zap or finish and turn it on.

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