Using the SimpliSend API to Send SMS from Your Own App

Every use case in this blog so far has assumed sending through the SimpliSend dashboard. But if SMS needs to be triggered from your own system - an e-commerce checkout, a booking app, an internal tool - the public API lets you send programmatically, using the same account balance and templates as the dashboard.

Getting an API key

API keys are issued from within your account (the permission is `apikeys.manage`), each scoped to what it's allowed to do - `sms.send` to send messages, `sms.read` to check status and balance. The full key value is shown exactly once, at creation, so it needs to be saved securely right away rather than retrieved later.

A minimal example

Sending a message is a single authenticated POST request with a destination number and either a plain message body or a saved template plus variables. Checking on it afterwards, or checking your remaining balance, are both simple authenticated GET requests. The exact request and response shapes, plus error codes and rate limits, are documented in full on the developer site rather than repeated here - it's kept up to date as the single source of truth for integration work.

What the API does and doesn't do today

• Send a single message immediately - by raw text or by template with variables
• Look up delivery status for a message you sent
• Check your account's remaining SMS balance
• No outbound webhooks yet - status changes need to be polled, not pushed to your own endpoint

That last point is worth planning around: if your integration needs to know the moment a message is delivered, poll the status endpoint on your own schedule rather than assuming a callback will arrive, since there isn't one yet for third-party integrations.

Where to go next

Full request/response examples, authentication details, error codes, and the complete platform API reference live at https://docs.simplisend.co.za - that's the right place to keep open while actually building an integration.