PD Twilio SMS for Blesta

PD Twilio SMS lets a hosting company text its clients from Blesta through its own Twilio account. 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. Twilio bills you at its own per-message rate, with no marked-up credits in between.

It is built for hosts who already use Twilio, or who want its reach and its Messaging Services, and who want SMS to work as part of Blesta rather than as a separate dashboard to log in to.

Why hosts choose PD Twilio SMS

Your Twilio account, your rate. You connect your own Account SID and credentials, so every text is billed by Twilio at its own price. We sell no credits and add no margin.

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 Twilio bills 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.

Honest delivery records. When Twilio answers that a message failed or was undelivered, History records it as failed, not as sent.

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.

A safe way to trial everything. The Test gateway records messages in History without calling Twilio, so you can build templates and triggers without spending a penny.

How it works

1. Connect Twilio. Under PD Modules, then Twilio SMS, then Gateways, add your Account SID and either your Auth Token or an API Key (SID and secret). Choose a From: a Twilio phone number, or a Messaging Service SID. An alphanumeric sender ID goes in From or on the Messaging Service.
2. Check it. Test connection sends nothing and costs nothing. Send test SMS delivers a real message to a number you give.
3. Switch on the messages you want. Map templates to events, or send by hand.
4. Watch it work. The dashboard and History show what went out and how each message fared.

The setup guide in the panel also covers the things that trip people up with Twilio: trial-account limits, geographic permissions (error 21408) and A2P registration (error 30007).

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 Twilio 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, Twilio's reference and any error, and resend it in one click
• 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

• Twilio credentials are 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 Twilio. Nothing about your clients comes to us

One product, every feature

PD Twilio 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 Amazon SNS, Vonage, Clickatell or another HTTP gateway, PD SMS Manager covers all of them in one module, and the two can run side by side.

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
• A Twilio account with a phone number or Messaging Service
• PD Modules, the free control panel every PD module installs into