Acquire a phone number from Flowroute and configure it for SMS messaging
After you sign up for a Flowroute account here, and log in to your account here, first you will be prompted to enter your address and to add funds to your new account. You can use a debit/credit card to add funds (the minimum amount accepted is $40). You can always update your address by clicking on ‘Preferences’ on the left panel and then on the ‘Account Information’ tab.
Before buying a phone number, you may want to click on ‘Preferences’ on the left panel, then click on the ‘Features’ tab, then turn off the ‘CNAM Lookups by Default’ switch, to avoid incurring additional fees for CNAM lookups for the newly purchased numbers.
It's important to note that Flowroute only supports sending/receiving SMS/MMS messages within USA and Canada (and it doesn’t support Alphanumeric Sender IDs). Therefore, if you want to buy an SMS/MMS-enabled phone number, you can only choose one located in USA or Canada and you can use it to send and receive messages only to and from USA and Canada. (On the other hand, Flowroute offers voice-enabled phone numbers in 160 countries.)
To buy a phone number click on ‘DIDS’ on the left panel, then click on the ‘Purchase’ tab. On the ‘DID Purchase’ page you can use the filters on the left panel to search for the available phone numbers in the country/state of your choice. Once you see the list of available phone numbers, you can choose a number and click the ‘Purchase’ button next to it. A pop-up message will ask if you want to send/receive SMS/MMS messages on the chosen number. Click ‘Yes’ and the number will be added to the list of purchased numbers that you can see by clicking on the ‘Manage’ tab.
The next step is to enable the latest messaging API version by clicking on ‘Preferences’ on the left panel, then clicking on the ‘API Control’ tab, then scrolling down to the ‘SMS Webhook Version’ and choosing ‘v2.1; since this is the latest stable version of the messaging API. To be able to send/receive messages, you will have to also create a pair of API keys and add the webhook URL for receiving messages on the same ‘API Control’ tab, as explained in the Flowroute Settings.
