Sending Bulk SMS

Bulk SMS is the standard way to send transactional or marketing messages to one or many recipients.

Basic Example

use SamuelMwangiW\Africastalking\Facades\Africastalking;

$response = Africastalking::sms('Hello from MyApp!')
    ->to('+254712345678')
    ->send();

Or with the global helper:

$response = africastalking()->sms('Hello from MyApp!')
    ->to('+254712345678')
    ->send();

Sending to Multiple Recipients

Pass an array of phone numbers to to():

$response = Africastalking::sms('Your OTP is 123456')
    ->to(['+254712345678', '+256706123567', '+255712000000'])
    ->send();

Full Method Reference

Method	Description
sms(string $text)	Set the message text (can also be set later with message())
message(string $text)	Set or overwrite the message text
text(string $text)	Alias for message()
to(string|array $numbers)	Set recipient phone number(s)
as(string $senderId)	Override the sender ID from config
bulk()	Mark as bulk (default — usually not needed explicitly)
enqueue()	Optimise throughput by batching with the API before waiting for telco acknowledgement
send()	Dispatch the request and return the response

Advanced Example

use SamuelMwangiW\Africastalking\Facades\Africastalking;

$response = Africastalking::sms()
    ->message('Your order #1234 has been shipped and will arrive in 2–3 days.')
    ->as('MyStore')                              // custom sender ID
    ->to(['+254712345678', '+256706123567'])
    ->enqueue()                                  // for high-volume sends
    ->send();

The Response

send() returns a SentMessageResponse object. Per-recipient results are in the ->recipients collection, each a SentMessageRecipient:

foreach ($response->recipients as $recipient) {
    echo $recipient->number->number; // +254712345678
    echo $recipient->status->value;  // "Success" | "InvalidPhoneNumber" | etc.
    echo $recipient->cost;           // "KES 0.8000"
    echo $recipient->id;             // AT message ID
}

Sender IDs

In the sandbox environment you may use any alphanumeric sender ID. In production, sender IDs must be registered with Africa's Talking for your account.

Sending Many Messages

Sending in a loop blocks on every request. See Async & Concurrency for non-blocking sends and concurrent batch sending.