Sendblue review

Sendblue is the incumbent in this category and the one most small teams land on. It runs the Apple-side infrastructure for you and exposes a conventional REST API with webhooks: you POST a number and a body, and the recipient gets a blue bubble from your dedicated business number. It has been operating longer than most of the alternatives, which in a category this young is itself a feature.

What it is good at

• +No Mac, no bridge, no jailbroken anything — it is a normal HTTPS API.
• +SMS fallback means one endpoint reaches iPhone and Android customers.
• +Webhooks for inbound replies make two-way conversations straightforward.
• +The longest operating history in a category where vendors come and go.

Where it will bite you

• −You are renting access — pricing scales with volume and number count.
• −Throughput is deliberately rate-limited to keep numbers healthy.
• −Publishes a great deal of competitor-comparison content; read it as marketing, not research.

The shape of the API

Illustrative — parameter names and endpoints change. Treat this as the flavour of the integration, and copy the real thing from the official docs.

curl -X POST https://api.sendblue.co/api/send-message \
  -H "sb-api-key-id: $SENDBLUE_KEY_ID" \
  -H "sb-api-secret-key: $SENDBLUE_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "number": "+15551234567",
    "content": "Your 2pm cut is confirmed. Reschedule: https://acme.co/b?utm_source=imessage&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=booking_confirm"
  }'

Tracking links with Sendblue

Whatever you send with, build the URL from one helper so tagging is consistent across every job and campaign. Open the UTM builder to generate one now.