RingCentral Extends SMS API PortfolioRingCentral Extends SMS API Portfolio

UCaaS leader RingCentral this week introduced a high-volume SMS API service at its first-ever virtual Code Together 2020 developer conference. This fully integrated service lets businesses send SMS messages and updates to customers through RingCentral’s open platform, while developers can use it to build customized apps.

The high-volume SMS API allows customers to use an existing business number, extension, or any other U.S. phone number to send high-volume and commercial SMS messages, RingCentral said. Customers also can use RingCentral numbers to send one-off messages or batch requests and gain access to message status, logs, store, and analytics for advanced insights and regulatory compliance, RingCentral added.

“Gone are the days of being limited to 40 messages per minute,” William Moxley, chief product officer of RingCentral, said on stage. Based on information shared on RingCentral's community developer site earlier this year, it seems the new high-volume SMS API will be able to handle throughout of up to 250,000 messages per day.

This high-volume SMS API service, in beta, is the latest of RingCentral’s moves to open up its UCaaS platform and expose APIs for developers. In kicking off the Code Together event, RingCentral also showcased other of its recent API offerings, including support for its video service within RingCentral Embeddable and its real-time call monitoring APIs.

With the APIs, customers and partners can integrate with the RingCentral platform to develop different levels of customization, as shared in Omdia's 2020 “UCaaS Service Provider Scorecard: North America,” written by Diane Myers, chief analyst for enterprise collaboration with IT research firm (see related No Jitter article). Real-time call monitoring has been available since earlier in the year to RingCentral Office customers, but the key feature with this API, is you can real-time monitor calls thru the API vs SIP.

RingCentral extends its platform through more than 70 APIs, including active call control, Glip calendar, and international SMS support. It also provides API exposure for messaging and collaboration, resulting in integrations with more than 50 applications, including Confluence, Salesforce.com, and ServiceNow, as Myers noted in her report.

SMS APIs, because they allow for anonymous texts such as used by Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber, are among the most popular for developers, as Myers pointed out in an email exchange with No Jitter. Large-volume SMS APIs, such as RingCentral’s latest, come in handy for marketing blasts and loyalty programs, she added. “Utilizing SMS messages has been a key communication mode for a number of businesses across marketing, appointment reminders, customer care, two-factor authentication,” she said.

For example, Pacific Dental Services, a dental business support organization, uses RingCentral’s SMS API to stay HIPAA-compliant. The organization integrated RingCentral SMS with an app that removes protected health information from digital messages, Kira Makagon, CIO of RingCentral, said during the Code Together keynote. Pacific Dental also uses automated SMS reminders for upcoming appointments, which has significantly reduced no show appointments, and improved its bottom line, she added.

For its high-volume SMS API, RingCentral pointed to use cases such as mass marketing, one-time passwords, two-factor authentication, chatbots, automated messages, notifications, and customer polls and surveys, for its new API.

The high-volume SMS service integrates with RingCentral’s message, video, and phone APIs. The offering is available as part of the RingCentral Open Platform, and as a pre-built application in the RingCentral App Gallery.