The Twilio alternative that runs on your own phones
Your phones. Your SIMs. Your SMS API.
Send and receive SMS from your own Android phones over a clean REST API. Real numbers, real delivery — no per-message fees, no A2P 10DLC registration.
No credit card · Free forever for 1 phone · Live in 5 minutes
SMSKit OTP
+254 712 345 678
Aggregator SMS is expensive, slow, and gets filtered.
You pay per message — even when it fails.
Twilio and aggregators bill every send, delivered or not.
Registration is a tax on time.
A2P 10DLC means forms, brand vetting, and 2–3 weeks of waiting.
Short codes get flagged.
Shared sender IDs land in spam. Your OTP arrives late, or never.
There's a simpler path: send from a real phone, on a real SIM, that carriers already trust.
How it works
From API call to delivered SMS in four steps.
- 1
Pair a phone
Install the SMSKit Gateway app on any Android phone (8.0+), open the dashboard, and scan a pairing code. The phone registers and reports its SIMs.
- 2
Call the API
From your backend, POST /api/sms/send with a recipient and a message, authenticated by your API key. We queue the message and pick the best device + SIM.
- 3
We wake your phone
A high-priority push (FCM) wakes the app even if it's idle. It pulls the job and sends the SMS through Android's native SmsManager — over your real SIM.
- 4
Track everything
The phone reports back: sent, delivered, or failed. See it live in the dashboard, poll the job-status endpoint, and receive webhooks. Replies come back as sms:received.
Developers
Send your first SMS in three lines.
One clean endpoint. JSON in, job id out. The same call works from any language — here are three.
curl https://api.smskit.cloud/api/sms/send \
-H "X-Api-Key: sk_live_your_key" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "recipient": "+254712345678", "message": "Your code is 123456" }'Features
Everything you need to run SMS in production.
Multi-device & multi-SIM routing
Spread sends across every phone and SIM you connect.
Two-way messaging
Receive replies, thread conversations, auto-route responses.
Webhooks
Real-time sms:sent, sms:delivered, sms:failed, sms:received — with retries.
Delivery reports
Know what landed, per carrier, per SIM — not just "accepted".
Retry + dead-letter
Failed sends retry across devices; exhausted jobs land in a dead-letter queue.
Per-device throttling
An hourly limit per device keeps carriers happy and your SIMs un-flagged.
Real-time dashboard
Watch devices, jobs, and inboxes update live.
Idempotency keys
Safe retries. Never double-send an OTP.
Priority routing
Push OTPs ahead of bulk traffic (priority 0–10).
Built like infrastructure, not a side project.
Your data stays isolated.
Every account gets its own database. Your message content never shares a table with anyone else's — even though we host the platform.
Observability included.
Prometheus metrics, health checks, and PII-masked structured logging — the things a real production system needs.
Fully managed, zero ops.
No servers to run, nothing to deploy. We operate the backend, push, routing, and dashboard — you bring phones and send.
Real SIMs get delivered. Cloud numbers get filtered.
| Aggregators (Twilio, etc.) | SMSKit | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Per message, forever | KES 10/phone/month, unlimited sends |
| Registration | A2P 10DLC — forms + 2–3 wk wait | None — it's your own SIM |
| Sender | Shared short code / brand ID | Your real phone number |
| Deliverability | Filtered, flagged as spam | Person-to-person, carrier-trusted |
| Your data | One shared multi-tenant database | Your own isolated database |
SMSKit is built for your own controlled volume — ideal for OTP, alerts, and two-way, not unsolicited mass marketing.
Pricing
One price. Per phone. That's it.
Free
For testing and small projects.
Free forever
- 1 phone
- 50 SMS / day
- 1 SIM
- 1-day history
- 1 API client
- Community support
Standard
Most popularFor production. Add as many phones as you need.
per phone · billed monthly
- Unlimited phones — KES 10 each
- Unlimited messages *
- Unlimited SIMs
- 30-day history
- Two-way inbox
- Webhooks (full, with retries)
- Unlimited API clients
- Priority support
Questions, answered.
Do I need to register with carriers (A2P 10DLC)?
No. You're sending from your own SIM, so no registration, brand vetting, or approval wait.
What does it cost?
KES 10 per phone per month, unlimited messages. A free tier covers 1 phone for testing.
What phone do I need?
Any Android phone running Android 8.0+ with a SIM. Cheap, used phones work fine.
Can I receive replies?
Yes — two-way messaging, conversation threading, and sms:received webhooks are built in.
Is there a limit on how many SMS I can send?
No account-level cap on a paid phone. A per-device hourly limit (default 200/hr) protects your SIM from carrier flags.
Why isn't it on the Google Play Store?
Google restricts SMS-permission apps. For now you sideload a signed APK (we guide you through it); a Play listing is on the roadmap.
Start sending in five minutes.
Pair a phone, grab an API key, send your first SMS — free.