Octopods allows you to manage and respond to customer conversations coming from your SMS number directly within Intercom. As of now we support 5 different SMS providers: Twilio, MessageBird, Nexmo, TextMagic and Africa's Talking.

This article assumes you've already connected your Intercom workspace. If you're not sure how to sign up for an Octopods account and connect your Intercom workspace, please read our Quick Start Guide first.

To connect your SMS channel you'll need to start a trial subscription. Go to Billing and select the Octopods Omnichannel plan.

If you don't have a phone number with any of these providers, our connection guides will direct you to where you can purchase one.

Send a message from your personal number to the number you've connected to Intercom. When the message reaches your Intercom inbox, reply to that message, and you will receive it as an SMS to your personal number.

Here's how the SMS will appear in your Intercom inbox:

Here's how to reply to that SMS:

Here's how it looks like from your personal number, or from your customer's perspective:

With Octopods, you can reach out to your customers even before they reach out to you. This can be done from using our Intercom Inbox app, or from a user's profile using our Chrome extension.

This is how it looks like from the Inbox:

And this is our Chrome extension:

Proactive messages are included for free in the WhatsApp Business plan. If you're only subscribed to our Omnichannel plan, you will need the Proactive Messaging add-on. You can subscribe from your billing section here.

This guide will help you with sending proactive messages:

If you intend to use your number to communicate with customers in multiple countries, please bear in mind that messaging services only guarantee local delivery of SMS. For example, a Japan number only guarantees that your SMS will reach other phone numbers in Japan.

International messaging works for some countries, and not for others. Therefore, it's not guaranteed, and it's best to always use a local number.

We only support Twilio MMS for US & Canada.