SMS not sending to Kenyans

Hi @Genteel64235! 

I am sorry to hear you are having issues with SMS reminder deliverability. I can certainly understand that being frustrating for both your hosts and invitees!

We use long code for internal numbers, and in general, long codes have less deliverability internationally. Some wireless carriers may filter it out, and some countries are more strict on that than others – for example Canada has very strict guidelines. Due to filtering limitations, Twilio may be unable to deliver messages to Indian or Canadian phone numbers. More details about filtering here and in the troubleshooting steps below.

In certain countries (Afghanistan, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia) SMS messages must be sent from an Alphanumeric Sender ID (i.e. CALENDLY) rather than an American phone number. This is to comply with carrier regulations.

Additionally, Twilio has stopped supporting SMS delivery to Russia or phone numbers with (+7) area codes.

Further, there is no ability to send SMS reminders via a custom number through Calendly. The number used for delivering reminders is based on country regulations and system capabilities and varies based on international location. We are not able to customize the name or number the reminders are delivered from.

If you need additional control over this functionality, you might consider using something like our Zapier integration to accomplish this, connecting Calendly with an external SMS service.

I do see that you reached out to our support team about a similar matter and that you were given information to look into regarding carrier filtering. Are you having new issues in regards to SMS reminder deliverability, or is this in regards to the same matter? Thanks for letting us know and your continued patience - and for participating in our community! 

Actually, its the same issue. And they gave us some Twilio numbers to send to our carrier to unblock, which we did, and still doesnt work. 

The problem is, I myself, I am a developer, and I sometimes use Twilio in my projects, and the SMS deliver just fine using either Sender id ProNet, or AUTHMSG. So if you are saying that you are using Twilio and theres a problem with deliverability, then that’s sus.

Maybe if you would want to try it out, and then share screenshots where you receive the SMS, then from there, we can narrow down to the issue. Here is the events link https://calendly.com/genteel

Hi @Genteel64235!

Do you happen to know if your other use of Twilio uses long code numbers? I’ve been digging into Twilio documentation specific to Kenya and it looks like long code numbers - which is what we use - aren’t supported at all in Kenya, even if the carrier has said they’ve unblocked them. There’s more info on all that here: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/guidelines/ke/sms

Let us know!

So, what can be the best Solution for this? Because the SMS was the main reason we paid for the service, and if that’s not working, then its a problem

Hello again, @Genteel64235! Unfortunately there is no way to use Calendly to send SMS messages in this specific scenario, to reiterate what’s been said in your support ticket and these community responses. The work around available to you is to utilize a third party integration, like Zapier, gone over above with an external SMS service! This is something you’d still need to have upgraded to access - so hopefully you can check it out and make it work for you! You can read more about it here. 

If this is not a viable solution, please reach back out via your support ticket so we can discuss further.