API Spotlight: International SMS

RingCentral is happy to announce the availability of our International SMS API. Customers who are part of US and Canada Office tiers can now send and receive SMS to International numbers there by enabling efficient global messaging.

Supported Countries

RingCentral currently supports the following countries for SMS:

• Europe — Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal , Switzerland, Sweden, UK
• LATAM — Argentina, Brazil
• APAC — Australia, Hong Kong , Japan, Singapore, Taiwan

The following countries are in Beta:

• Europe — Germany, Italy, Spain
• APAC — China, India
• Russia

NOTE: Countries enabled for your account that are not on either of the above lists can be submitted but have low delivery rates. RingCentral has been able to verify termination with limited mobile providers in such countries. This list will be expanded on an ongoing basis as success rates improve with such countries.

How to Enable International SMS

To use International SMS, your account must have the following pre-requisites:

• Office plan for US or Canada including Business SMS
• International Calling. See Knowledgebase Article 3431 to enable this for your account

Then, contact your RingCentral account manager or customer support to request International SMS.

Pricing

International SMS is an add-on to the existing Office plans. Unlike local SMS, there are no messages included in the base plan and you will play for what you use.

To view the pricing of International SMS, login to your RingCentral Online Account Portal as an admin and click on the Billing menu.

Click on International Calling to view the SMS rates for each country. If International SMS pricing are not provided, please contact customer support to enable the feature.

Send International SMS through the API

Sending to and receiving from an International SMS through RingCentral API is the same as sending to and receiving from a domestic SMS. The only difference between the two is “To” number which would be an international number. Please make sure the International number you use is a mobile number in E.164 format and not a landline number. This is important to check for some countries like the UK. You could use one of the third party service like numverify to check if the number is a landline or mobile number.

Step 1: Create an .env file with the following attributes.

RINGCENTRAL_CLIENT_ID=yourClientId
RINGCENTRAL_CLIENT_SECRET=yourClientSecret
RINGCENTRAL_SERVER_URL=https://platform.devtest.ringcentral.com
RINGCENTRAL_USERNAME=+16505550100
RINGCENTRAL_EXTENSION=
RINGCENTRAL_PASSWORD=yourPassword
RINGCENTRAL_RECEIVER=+447911123456

Step 2: Create and index.js file with copy the code below.

The example below uses the RingCentral Node JS SDK to access the platform, authenticate the user and send SMS message. We then gather the from and to number from the environment file. Note that the to number here is an international number supported by RingCentral.

const SDK = require('ringcentral')
const dotenv = require('dotenv')
dotenv.config()
const rcsdk = new SDK({
  server: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_SERVER_URL,
  appKey: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_CLIENT_ID,
  appSecret: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_CLIENT_SECRET
})
const platform = rcsdk.platform()
platform.login({
  username: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_USERNAME,
  extension: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_EXTENSION,
  password: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_PASSWORD
}).then(response => {
  platform.post('/account/~/extension/~/sms', {
    from: { phoneNumber: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_USERNAME },
    to: [
      { phoneNumber: process.env.RINGCENTRAL_RECEIVER }
    ],
    text: 'Message content'
  }).then(response => {
    console.log('SMS sent: ' + response.json().id)
  }).catch(e => {
    console.error(e)
  })
}).catch(e => {
  console.error(e)
})

You could also use our API Explorer to send SMS to RingCentral supported international countries.

Conclusion

Sending international SMS is no different from sending domestic SMS. Using RingCentral SDKs make developers life much easier when it come to authentication and accessing RingCentral platform APIs.

A step by step tutorial to send SMS available here!

Give it a try, and I more than welcome any kind of feedback!