ChatPilot
Getting started

Text messages on your own number (SMS)

Send and receive SMS on a number of your own through Twilio, without a Mac.

Customers who text you rather than chat: ChatPilot can take SMS on a phone number of your own at Twilio, an SMS provider, and you answer them from the inbox like any chat. It needs no Mac and no phone (on a Mac, your iPhone's own SMS come in through iMessage and SMS instead).

  • People text your Twilio number; each person is a chat of its own, switched off until you switch it on.
  • Photos they send by MMS come in too. Replies are text only.
  • Replies go out the same way as everywhere: as a draft you approve, or by auto-answer in a chat where you switched it on.
  • Someone who answers STOP gets no more SMS from your number (Twilio sees to that) until they send START; ChatPilot says so instead of sending.

What it costs

Twilio charges you directly, at its own prices: for the number each month and for every message, in and out. A long text counts as several messages (160 characters each, 70 as soon as it has an emoji or a letter outside the plain alphabet). The card shows this month's messages and what they cost at Twilio, and about what one message costs. ChatPilot adds nothing.

Set it up

It needs the panel at its own HTTPS address, because Twilio delivers the messages there: a server of your own or the hosted ChatPilot. On a panel that is only on your computer, the card warns you.

  1. At twilio.com, make an account and get a phone number that can send SMS (Phone Numbers → Buy a number).
  2. In the panel, open Settings → SMS and press Set up.
  3. Paste the Account SID and the Auth token (Twilio Console → Account Info) and your number with its country code, like +44…, then press Check & connect. ChatPilot checks them with Twilio and keeps the token in the keychain, never in a file.
  4. If the number doesn't send its messages anywhere yet, ChatPilot points it at the panel and the card says so. Otherwise the card shows the Webhook address: in Twilio under Phone Numbers → your number → Messaging Configuration, set A message comes in to Webhook, HTTP POST and that address.

New token replaces the auth token (leave it empty to keep the stored one); Remove disconnects SMS and forgets the token, its chats stay. The number stays yours at Twilio, and costs what Twilio charges until you release it there. (A server set up by hand can have it in its config file instead: The config file.)

ChatPilot reads only deliveries signed with your auth token. Its chats start switched off like any other: Choose which chats ChatPilot may read.

Checked against ChatPilot 0.1.0b2. Report a problem with this page