Using your own SMS or Email Provider

Waitwhile supports integrating with your own preferred messaging provider instead of the providers that we natively support (incl. Twilio, Messagebird, Plivo).

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Important consideration

Using your own SMS provider will only allow for 1-way messaging.
Currently 2-way messaging is only supported when you use Waitwhile's default messaging providers. That means that you will no longer see your customer's text replies directly inside Waitwhile anymore.

What you will need

  • Messaging provider with a transaction APIΒ 
  • Server Backend that is responsible for receiving message requests from Waitwhile and forwarding these to the Messaging Provider

Conceptual implementation

  1. Set up your backend server and create an API endpoint to receive message requests (e.g. https://api.yourdomain.com/sendmessage)
  2. Within the Waitwhile UI, add a new Webhook endpoint under Settings > Developers > API & Webhooks. Under the Webhooks sections, select "Add Endpoint" and enter your endpoint URL and choose to trigger the webhook on the "Message created" event. Alternatively, you can also add the webhook directly using the Waitwhile API.
  3. Waitwhile API will now pass the sender object (message event response that contains the message data) to your server.
  4. In your server backend, set up an integration with your Messaging Provider to pass the sender object data to their API.
  5. Once everything is confirmed to work on your end, we will turn off the default Waitwhile SMS provider for your account.