Publishing to a mobile phone - Amazon Simple Notification Service
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Publishing to a mobile phone

You can use Amazon SNS to send SMS messages directly to a mobile phone without subscribing the phone number to an Amazon SNS topic.

Note

Subscribing phone numbers to a topic is useful if you want to send one message to multiple phone numbers at once. For instructions on publishing an SMS message to a topic, see Publishing to a topic.

When you send a message, you can control whether the message is optimized for cost or reliable delivery. You can also specify a sender ID or origination number. If you send the message programmatically using the Amazon SNS API or the Amazon SDKs, you can specify a maximum price for the message delivery.

Each SMS message can contain up to 140 bytes, and the character quota depends on the encoding scheme. For example, an SMS message can contain:

  • 160 GSM characters

  • 140 ASCII characters

  • 70 UCS-2 characters

If you publish a message that exceeds the size quota, Amazon SNS sends it as multiple messages, each fitting within the size quota. Messages are not cut off in the middle of a word, but instead on whole-word boundaries. The total size quota for a single SMS publish action is 1,600 bytes.

When you send an SMS message, you specify the phone number using the E.164 format, a standard phone numbering structure used for international telecommunication. Phone numbers that follow this format can have a maximum of 15 digits along with the prefix of a plus sign (+) and the country code. For example, a US phone number in E.164 format appears as +1XXX5550100.

Sending a message (console)

  1. Sign in to the Amazon SNS console.

  2. In the console menu, choose an Amazon Region that supports SMS messaging.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Text messaging (SMS).

  4. On the Mobile text messaging (SMS) page, choose Publish text message.

  5. On the Publish SMS message page, for Message type, choose one of the following:

    • Promotional – Non-critical messages, such as marketing messages.

    • Transactional – Critical messages that support customer transactions, such as one-time passcodes for multi-factor authentication.

    Note

    This message-level setting overrides your account-level default message type. You can set an account-level default message type from the Text messaging preferences section of the Mobile text messaging (SMS) page.

    For pricing information for promotional and transactional messages, see Worldwide SMS Pricing.

  6. For Destination phone number, enter the phone number to which you want to send the message.

  7. For Message, enter the message to send.

  8. (Optional) Under Origination identities, specify how to identify yourself to your recipients:

    • To specify a Sender ID, type a custom ID that contains 3-11 alphanumeric characters, including at least one letter and no spaces. The sender ID is displayed as the message sender on the receiving device. For example, you can use your business brand to make the message source easier to recognize.

      Support for sender IDs varies by country and/or region. For example, messages delivered to U.S. phone numbers will not display the sender ID. For the countries and regions that support sender IDs, see Supported countries and regions.

      If you do not specify a sender ID, one of the following is displayed as the originating identity:

      • In countries that support long codes, the long code is shown.

      • In countries where only sender IDs are supported, NOTICE is shown.

      This message-level sender ID overrides your default sender ID, which you set on the Text messaging preferences page.

    • To specify an Origination number, enter a string of 5-14 numbers to display as the sender's phone number on the receiver's device. This string must match an origination number that is configured in your Amazon Web Services account for the destination country. The origination number can be a 10DLC number, toll-free number, person-to-person long code, or short codes. For more information, see Origination identities for SMS messages.

      If you don't specify an origination number, Amazon SNS selects an origination number to use for the SMS text message, based on your Amazon Web Services account configuration.

  9. If you're sending SMS messages to recipients in India, expand Country-specific attributes, and specify the following attributes:

    • Entity ID – The entity ID or principal entity (PE) ID for sending SMS messages to recipients in India. This ID is a unique string of 1–50 characters that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) provides to identify the entity that you registered with the TRAI.

    • Template ID – The template ID for sending SMS messages to recipients in India. This ID is a unique, TRAI-provided string of 1–50 characters that identifies the template that you registered with the TRAI. The template ID must be associated with the sender ID that you specified for the message.

    For more information on sending SMS messages to recipients in India, see Sender ID registration requirements for India.

  10. Choose Publish message.

Tip

To send SMS messages from an origination number, you can also choose Origination numbers in the Amazon SNS console navigation panel. Choose an origination number that includes SMS in the Capabilities column, and then choose Publish text message.

Sending a message (Amazon SDKs)

To send an SMS message using one of the Amazon SDKs, use the API operation in that SDK that corresponds to the Publish request in the Amazon SNS API. With this request, you can send an SMS message directly to a phone number. You can also use the MessageAttributes parameter to set values for the following attribute names:

AWS.SNS.SMS.SenderID

A custom ID that contains 3–11 alphanumeric characters or hyphen (-) characters, including at least one letter and no spaces. The sender ID appears as the message sender on the receiving device. For example, you can use your business brand to help make the message source easier to recognize.

Support for sender IDs varies by country or region. For example, messages delivered to US phone numbers don't display the sender ID. For a list of the countries or regions that support sender IDs, see Supported countries and regions.

If you don't specify a sender ID, a long code appears as the sender ID in supported countries or regions. For countries or regions that require an alphabetic sender ID, NOTICE appears as the sender ID.

This message-level attribute overrides the account-level attribute DefaultSenderID, which you can set using the SetSMSAttributes request.

AWS.MM.SMS.OriginationNumber

A custom string of 5–14 numbers, which can include an optional leading plus sign (+). This string of numbers appears as the sender's phone number on the receiving device. The string must match an origination number that's configured in your Amazon account for the destination country. The origination number can be a 10DLC number, toll-free number, person-to-person (P2P) long code, or short code. For more information, see Origination numbers.

If you don't specify an origination number, Amazon SNS chooses an origination number based on your Amazon account configuration.

AWS.SNS.SMS.MaxPrice

The maximum price in USD that you're willing to spend to send the SMS message. If Amazon SNS determines that sending the message would incur a cost that exceeds your maximum price, it doesn't send the message.

This attribute has no effect if your month-to-date SMS costs have already exceeded the quota set for the MonthlySpendLimit attribute. You can set the MonthlySpendLimit attribute using the SetSMSAttributes request.

If you're sending the message to an Amazon SNS topic, the maximum price applies to each message delivery to each phone number that is subscribed to the topic.

AWS.SNS.SMS.SMSType

The type of message that you're sending:

  • Promotional (default) – Non-critical messages, such as marketing messages.

  • Transactional – Critical messages that support customer transactions, such as one-time passcodes for multi-factor authentication.

This message-level attribute overrides the account-level attribute DefaultSMSType, which you can set using the SetSMSAttributes request.

AWS.MM.SMS.EntityId

This attribute is required only for sending SMS messages to recipients in India.

This is your entity ID or principal entity (PE) ID for sending SMS messages to recipients in India. This ID is a unique string of 1–50 characters that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) provides to identify the entity that you registered with the TRAI.

AWS.MM.SMS.TemplateId

This attribute is required only for sending SMS messages to recipients in India.

This is your template for sending SMS messages to recipients in India. This ID is a unique, TRAI-provided string of 1–50 characters that identifies the template that you registered with the TRAI. The template ID must be associated with the sender ID that you specified for the message.

Sending a message

The following code examples show how to publish SMS messages using Amazon SNS.

.NET
Amazon SDK for .NET
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.

namespace SNSMessageExample { using System; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Amazon; using Amazon.SimpleNotificationService; using Amazon.SimpleNotificationService.Model; public class SNSMessage { private AmazonSimpleNotificationServiceClient snsClient; /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="SNSMessage"/> class. /// Constructs a new SNSMessage object initializing the Amazon Simple /// Notification Service (Amazon SNS) client using the supplied /// Region endpoint. /// </summary> /// <param name="regionEndpoint">The Amazon Region endpoint to use in /// sending test messages with this object.</param> public SNSMessage(RegionEndpoint regionEndpoint) { snsClient = new AmazonSimpleNotificationServiceClient(regionEndpoint); } /// <summary> /// Sends the SMS message passed in the text parameter to the phone number /// in phoneNum. /// </summary> /// <param name="phoneNum">The ten-digit phone number to which the text /// message will be sent.</param> /// <param name="text">The text of the message to send.</param> /// <returns>Async task.</returns> public async Task SendTextMessageAsync(string phoneNum, string text) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(phoneNum) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(text)) { return; } // Now actually send the message. var request = new PublishRequest { Message = text, PhoneNumber = phoneNum, }; try { var response = await snsClient.PublishAsync(request); } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine($"Error sending message: {ex}"); } } } }
  • For API details, see Publish in Amazon SDK for .NET API Reference.

C++
SDK for C++
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.

/** * Publish SMS: use Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to send an SMS text message to a phone number. * Note: This requires additional AWS configuration prior to running example. * * NOTE: When you start using Amazon SNS to send SMS messages, your AWS account is in the SMS sandbox and you can only * use verified destination phone numbers. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-sms-sandbox.html. * NOTE: If destination is in the US, you also have an additional restriction that you have use a dedicated * origination ID (phone number). You can request an origination number using Amazon Pinpoint for a fee. * See https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/provisioning-and-using-10dlc-origination-numbers-with-amazon-sns/ * for more information. * * <phone_number_value> input parameter uses E.164 format. * For example, in United States, this input value should be of the form: +12223334444 */ //! Send an SMS text message to a phone number. /*! \param message: The message to publish. \param phoneNumber: The phone number of the recipient in E.164 format. \param clientConfiguration: AWS client configuration. \return bool: Function succeeded. */ bool AwsDoc::SNS::publishSms(const Aws::String &message, const Aws::String &phoneNumber, const Aws::Client::ClientConfiguration &clientConfiguration) { Aws::SNS::SNSClient snsClient(clientConfiguration); Aws::SNS::Model::PublishRequest request; request.SetMessage(message); request.SetPhoneNumber(phoneNumber); const Aws::SNS::Model::PublishOutcome outcome = snsClient.Publish(request); if (outcome.IsSuccess()) { std::cout << "Message published successfully with message id, '" << outcome.GetResult().GetMessageId() << "'." << std::endl; } else { std::cerr << "Error while publishing message " << outcome.GetError().GetMessage() << std::endl; } return outcome.IsSuccess(); }
  • For API details, see Publish in Amazon SDK for C++ API Reference.

Java
SDK for Java 2.x
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.

import software.amazon.awssdk.regions.Region; import software.amazon.awssdk.services.sns.SnsClient; import software.amazon.awssdk.services.sns.model.PublishRequest; import software.amazon.awssdk.services.sns.model.PublishResponse; import software.amazon.awssdk.services.sns.model.SnsException; /** * Before running this Java V2 code example, set up your development * environment, including your credentials. * * For more information, see the following documentation topic: * * https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-java/latest/developer-guide/get-started.html */ public class PublishTextSMS { public static void main(String[] args) { final String usage = """ Usage: <message> <phoneNumber> Where: message - The message text to send. phoneNumber - The mobile phone number to which a message is sent (for example, +1XXX5550100).\s """; if (args.length != 2) { System.out.println(usage); System.exit(1); } String message = args[0]; String phoneNumber = args[1]; SnsClient snsClient = SnsClient.builder() .region(Region.US_EAST_1) .build(); pubTextSMS(snsClient, message, phoneNumber); snsClient.close(); } public static void pubTextSMS(SnsClient snsClient, String message, String phoneNumber) { try { PublishRequest request = PublishRequest.builder() .message(message) .phoneNumber(phoneNumber) .build(); PublishResponse result = snsClient.publish(request); System.out .println(result.messageId() + " Message sent. Status was " + result.sdkHttpResponse().statusCode()); } catch (SnsException e) { System.err.println(e.awsErrorDetails().errorMessage()); System.exit(1); } } }
  • For API details, see Publish in Amazon SDK for Java 2.x API Reference.

Kotlin
SDK for Kotlin
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.

suspend fun pubTextSMS(messageVal: String?, phoneNumberVal: String?) { val request = PublishRequest { message = messageVal phoneNumber = phoneNumberVal } SnsClient { region = "us-east-1" }.use { snsClient -> val result = snsClient.publish(request) println("${result.messageId} message sent.") } }
  • For API details, see Publish in Amazon SDK for Kotlin API reference.

PHP
SDK for PHP
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.

require 'vendor/autoload.php'; use Aws\Exception\AwsException; use Aws\Sns\SnsClient; /** * Sends a text message (SMS message) directly to a phone number using Amazon SNS. * * This code expects that you have AWS credentials set up per: * https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-php/v3/developer-guide/guide_credentials.html */ $SnSclient = new SnsClient([ 'profile' => 'default', 'region' => 'us-east-1', 'version' => '2010-03-31' ]); $message = 'This message is sent from a Amazon SNS code sample.'; $phone = '+1XXX5550100'; try { $result = $SnSclient->publish([ 'Message' => $message, 'PhoneNumber' => $phone, ]); var_dump($result); } catch (AwsException $e) { // output error message if fails error_log($e->getMessage()); }
Python
SDK for Python (Boto3)
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.

class SnsWrapper: """Encapsulates Amazon SNS topic and subscription functions.""" def __init__(self, sns_resource): """ :param sns_resource: A Boto3 Amazon SNS resource. """ self.sns_resource = sns_resource def publish_text_message(self, phone_number, message): """ Publishes a text message directly to a phone number without need for a subscription. :param phone_number: The phone number that receives the message. This must be in E.164 format. For example, a United States phone number might be +12065550101. :param message: The message to send. :return: The ID of the message. """ try: response = self.sns_resource.meta.client.publish( PhoneNumber=phone_number, Message=message ) message_id = response["MessageId"] logger.info("Published message to %s.", phone_number) except ClientError: logger.exception("Couldn't publish message to %s.", phone_number) raise else: return message_id
  • For API details, see Publish in Amazon SDK for Python (Boto3) API Reference.