MessageBird SMS Magento 2 Extension
One of the ways to build effective communication with your clients and show your personal approach is using SMS text messages. By sending follow-up messages, abandoned cart notifications, and other alerts via SMS, you can quickly inform customers about various important events during their purchasing experience. If you install an appropriate third-party module on your Magento 2 store, you can fully leverage SMS integration possibilities without spending much time and effort.
Today, we present you a tool that enables ecommerce merchants to send order status change messages directly to a customer’s phone – MessageBird SMS by Magextensions.io. The Magento 2 module utilizes the MessageBird API and provides online store owners with necessary functions for implementing SMS updates into their business workflow. By timely informing clients about changes in their order status and package delivery, you will improve customer service and build trust to your store.
Below, we provide an overview of the MessageBird platform and describe its Magento 2 integration using the SMS order updates extension.
Table of contents
MessageBird Overview
- Global coverage
MessageBird covers numbers in 150 countries and 700 area codes.
- Extensive carrier network
The platform has the largest global delivery infrastructure with over 900 carriers. It also helps companies to save money on global delivery rates connecting them to local operators.
- Scalability
MessageBird provides reliable and autoscaling APIs ensuring consistent efficiency along with your business growth.
- Security
The platform considers data safety as one of its highest priorities.
- No coding skills required
The platform’s dashboard tools streamline the configuration process without programming knowledge and special hardware required.
- Compliance with legal requirements
MessageBird helps users to reach compliance with relevant legislation, including GDPR.
- Flexible pricing plans
The service has affordable pricing plans adjusted to particular business needs.
- 24/7 Support
The company provides its clients with world-class support service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
MessageBird allows companies to organize quick and effective interactions with their clients across multiple channels using the following products:
- Voice – a solution for arranging internal phone calls flow and building custom applications on the VoIP platform.
- SMS – a global messaging service built on powerful APIs that allows sending and receiving messages from apps, products, and websites globally.
Since the goal of this post is to take a more in-depth look at the Magento 2 SMS integration, we will describe the SMS functionality in more detail further below.
- WhatsApp – possibility to use WhatsApp chat for communication with customers by gaining access to WhatsApp Business solutions.
- Email – a reliable communication channel for sending transactional and marketing messages to customers.
- Flow Builder – an intuitive visual editor for creating integrated custom communication flows using pre-configured Voice and SMS templates without writing a single line of code.
- Conversations – a programmable solution that unifies the most popular communication channels via a single API.
MessageBird states that its SMS platform is the fastest and most reliable for sending and receiving messages worldwide. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes that have different capacity needs according to the number of SMS messages they send, starting from one hundred and reaching one million. Below, we list the main features of the MessageBird SMS platform:
- Stable REST API
MessageBird provides reliable API integration with built-in redundancies, failovers, and enterprise-ready SLAs.
- High deliverability
Greater deliverability is ensured by the smart routing technology, direct-to-carrier connections, two-way messaging, and SMPP protocol.
- A broad network of phone numbers
The platform allows users to set up local numbers in over 70 countries, as well as short codes in selected countries.
- Global carrier infrastructure
MessageBird is the only CPaaS registered as a carrier which makes it unique and allows providing users with higher speed, reliability, and fair costs.
- High level of security
The company’s infrastructure has built-in data protection and enables users to implement two-factor authentication as an additional security layer.
- Improved content management
MessageBird SMS offers such functions like automatic concatenation, Unicode and emoji support, and message queuing.
- Reporting system
Users get the ability to generate DLR and custom reports, gain reporting insights, and perform export via CSV.
- Extensive developer documentation
MessageBird provides developers with an intuitive SMS API interface supported by thought-out documentation, software development kits in different languages, user guides and tutorials, and free credits for testing.
- Outbound SMS campaigns
With the MessageBird Campaign Builder, you can easily create personalized templates and send them to imported contacts in one click.
- Messaging flows
MessageBird Flow Builder provides a user-friendly visual editor for creating communication flows based on the pre-configured or custom templates.
Pricing Plans
MessageBird offers affordable rates based on the pay-as-you-go scheme and without charging extra fees. Besides, the company provides discounts to businesses that send a high volume of messages and doesn’t charge for inbound messages. Note that for SMS, additional fees may apply with the rates differing based on location and quantity. As for prices, they start at $.0061 per SMS. You can find more details on the MessageBird pricing plans here:
MessageBird SMS extension for Magento 2: Features
Now, let’s see what possibilities the MessageBird SMS extension offers to Magento 2 merchants for SMS integration on their stores.
The module provides necessary functionality enabling ecommerce business owners to integrate MessageBird API into their websites and send SMS order updates to their clients. This way, you can always keep your customers informed about order status changes and delivery by automatically sending SMS messages directly to their mobile phones.
Features of the MessageBird SMS extension for Magento 2 :
- SMS API technology as a basis of integration;
- Option to enable/disable the module for each order status individually;
- SMS alerts on new order placement;
- SMS messages on invoice creation;
- SMS notifications sent to customers when an order is shipped;
- SMS notifications sent to customers when credit is generated;
- Possibility to create a custom notification message for each order status update;
- Option to insert custom variables in the message (e.g., {$order_id}, {$email}, {$first_name}, {$last_name}, {$telephone}, and others);
- Sender name can be specified for all messages;
- Multiple stores support.
MessageBird SMS extension for Magento 2: Configuration
Note that you are required to obtain a separate
All settings of the MessageBird SMS extension are located under Stores -> Settings -> Configuration -> Message Bird. The Configuration page is divided into two sections: General Settings and Sales Messages.
In the first section, you enable/disable the module, enter your username and password for the MessageBird API, specify a sender name that will be visible to your customers, and decide whether to send messages only to mobile phone numbers or voice messages to normal numbers as well.
In Sales Messages, you can allow the extension to send SMS alerts on new order placement, invoice generation, shipment, and credit creation and specify a separate message for each event.
As you can see, the module’s backend configuration is simple and clear, so your admins can configure all settings in no time.
Final Words
MessageBird SMS by Magextensions is a very useful tool for building an effective communication channel to reach out to your clients and increase customer loyalty. The Magento 2 module’s straightforward backend interface allows you to quickly fine-tune the extension according to your business needs and fully leverage smooth integration of the MessageBird SMS API on your web store. As for the price, you can buy the M2 module for only $39.