PD Azure SMS for Blesta

PD Azure SMS lets a hosting company text its clients from Blesta through its own Azure Communication Services resource. Clients get a text when an invoice is created or paid, when a service is activated or suspended and when staff reply to a ticket. Your team gets a text when a new order arrives. You can also run a campaign to a filtered group of clients. Microsoft bills your Azure subscription at its own per-message rate, with no marked-up credits in between.

It is built for hosts who already run on Azure and want SMS on the same subscription and the same bill, with Blesta doing the sending and no separate SMS dashboard to maintain.

Why hosts choose PD Azure SMS

Your Azure resource, your rate. You connect your own Communication Services resource, so every text is billed by Microsoft at its own price. We sell no credits and add no margin.

Setup is one paste. Azure setup is a single connection string, which carries both the endpoint and the access key. Test connection signs a request with no recipient, so nothing is sent and nothing is charged, and a wrong key fails there instead of on a customer's text.

Plain answers when Azure is vague. Azure answers a bad send with a bare 401 and no detail. The module points you at the From sender first, which is the usual cause, and Test connection tells you whether the key itself is the problem. When Azure accepts a request but one recipient failed, that message is recorded as failed, not as sent.

Texts at the moments that matter. Email about a failing card gets filtered, but a text gets read. Triggers send on invoice created, invoice paid, service activated, service suspended or unsuspended and staff ticket replies.

Know the cost before you send. The Send screen counts segments the way providers bill them: 160 characters for GSM-7, 70 for Unicode, with emoji and extension characters counted correctly. Campaigns show the audience and the segment total before you commit.

Consent built in. Clients choose which kinds of text they receive, promotional texts are agreement-only by default, and an opt-out made while a message waits in the queue is respected.

How it works

1. Get a sender in Azure. Senders are provisioned in the Azure portal: a phone number or an alphanumeric sender ID on the same resource. Free-trial and free-credit subscriptions cannot buy numbers, and UK toll-free numbers do not carry SMS, so check this before you start.
2. Connect Azure. Under PD Modules, then Azure SMS, then Gateways, paste the connection string and enter the From sender. Test connection confirms the key without sending.
3. Switch on the messages you want. Map templates to events, or send by hand. The Test gateway records messages in History without calling Azure, so you can trial everything for free.
4. Watch it work. The dashboard and History show what went out and how each message fared.

What you get in Blesta

Sending

• Send a one-off message to a client picked by name, email or client ID using the number on file, or to any number you type
• Count segments before you send; drop a saved template into the message
• Several gateways at once, with one as the default; each trigger and campaign can use a chosen gateway
• Numbers come from the phone on the client's contact and are converted to international format automatically
• A texting panel on the client's profile, showing the number we would use and a box to text them there and then

Templates and triggers

• Templates grouped by category, with merge fields for first name, client name, company, invoice number, total and due date, product, domain, ticket subject and ticket number
• An empty merge field is left blank, never shown as raw braces
• Triggers for invoice created, invoice paid, service activated, service suspended or unsuspended and staff ticket reply

Campaigns

• Target clients by status and client group, send now or schedule
• Preview audience and cost shows who a campaign reaches and how many segments it costs
• Only clients who agreed to marketing texts are included; cancelling drops the unsent messages

Staff alerts

• Each administrator sets their own number and picks the events that text them: new order, paid invoice, new ticket and cancellation requests
• Alerts that depend on a failure are not offered on Blesta, because Blesta raises no such event
• Alerts and manual sends are never held back by quiet hours

Running it day to day

• A sending queue drained by Blesta's cron in batches, with retries and optional quiet hours in your company's timezone
• History searchable by number or text and filterable by status, gateway and date; open any message for its body, Azure's reference and any error, and resend it in one click
• Delivery reports can be requested from Azure, which publishes them to Event Grid. The module records whether Azure accepted each message, and says so
• A Health report showing whether the gateway is ready, what failed this month and whether the queue drains

What your customers get

• A Text messages page in their client area with their recent texts and a summary of what they have agreed to
• Tick boxes on their own profile and signup form, each with a plain explanation
• Real control. A customer who unticks a category is not texted in it, and an opt-out still stands when they next save their profile for any other reason

The pages render in Blesta's client portal theme, and their wording can be changed in a file that survives updates.

Security built in

• Your connection string is stored encrypted and never shown again after saving
• A disabled gateway never sends, even if a trigger names it
• A message and number go only to Azure. Nothing about your clients comes to us

One product, every feature

PD Azure SMS is one paid module with everything included: triggers, campaigns, staff alerts, client preferences and the Test gateway. There are no tiers. It installs into PD Modules in one click and uninstalls cleanly. Customers' text preferences are kept when you uninstall, on purpose, so consent is never lost.

If you also send through Twilio, Amazon SNS, Vonage, Clickatell or another HTTP gateway, PD SMS Manager covers all of them in one module.

If your subscription ever lapses, your data is kept. After a 14-day grace period admin features lock, then customer-facing features stop and automatic texts pause until you renew.

Requirements

• Blesta 6 or later on PHP 8.2 or later, with the ionCube Loader and cron running
• An Azure Communication Services resource with an SMS sender
• PD Modules 0.2.309 or later, the free control panel every PD module installs into