Twilio Third Party Application and Product Support – Twilio Support

Overview

The Twilio cloud platform offers a number of useful communications solutions, but is mainly focused on developers. Due to this nature, many third party (non-Twilio) companies have built applications to streamline the experience for end users. In this article, you'll find helpful tips and policies for supporting third party applications and services.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What Does "Third Party" Mean?

We use the term "third party" to describe any application or service that utilized Twilio's services, but was built by another non-Twilio company. These products may be used to facilitate communications like phone calls, sending SMS/MMS messages, video calling, live chat, and more. Here are some common examples:

CRMs like Agile, Zoho, vTiger CRM, Hubspot, etc.
Automation and integration services like Zapier, Microsoft Flow, IFTTT, etc.
Digital marketing services like ClickFunnels
Photo Booth software like Social Booth, dslrBooth, Sparkbooth, etc.
PBX and SBC hardware/software for SIP trunking like Asterisk, 3CX, Free PBX, etc.
Cisco WiFi
And more

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list. If you had to download and/or purchase non-Twilio software, or are required to pay another non-Twilio service provider, then chances are you're using a third party product.

What do third party applications commonly need to work with Twilio?

In order to use these applications and services, you will likely need the following three pieces of Twilio-supplied information:

A Twilio Account SID and Auth Token: The Account SID and project Auth Token serve as your API access credentials; you get these automatically when signing up for a Twilio account. Find them under "Project Info" in the Twilio Console.
A Twilio phone number: Free with a trial account, but needs to be picked out. For help getting a number, see our article here.

Please note that Elastic SIP Trunks require some additional configuration. For more information, please see our Elastic SIP Trunking setup guide.

Can I use a Twilio number with multiple third party services or applications?

How you will be able to configure your number will depend on the third party services configuration needs. You may need more than one phone number to successfully leverage all the third party services or applications you want to use.

With Twilio's services, a Twilio phone number cannot reside on more than one Twilio account or subaccount at a time. Additionally, services like Voice and SMS for a single phone number cannot be split to two different Twilio accounts. The phone number and all the services (Voice and SMS) must remain on the same account. Due to this, if the services or applications you are using require your number to reside within a specific Twilio account or subaccount, you will not be able to use the same number for multiple different platforms. You will need to pick one platform for the phone number to reside on and select a different phone number to use on the other platforms.

For case where the phone number is within your personal Twilio account and connected to the third party via Account SID and Auth Token linking, the third party applications generally update the configuration of your phone number in your account in order for you to use their SMS or Voice services. For example, some platforms may update the webhook handler on your number for incoming messages, in which case, your number will not be able to be utilized the same number for other platforms that require the same type of configuration.

Before making any changes to your number, we recommend reaching out directly to the third party platforms in question to understand how their applications will impact your number.

Additional Information

General Troubleshooting

If you are using a third party application and you are experiencing problems like call quality issues, dropped calls, undelivered SMS messages, dropped video calls, etc., you may be able to troubleshoot some of these issues yourself.

If you have your own Twilio account, you can login to Console, and check a number of locations for possible issues:

Check the Console Dashboard to make sure your account is active and has a positive balance.
Check Console Settings to verify you're using the correct live account Account SID and Auth Token credentials.
Check the Phone Numbers page, and make sure you're using a valid phone number on your account, with the correct formatting, and that you have valid webhooks for receiving calls and SMS messages.
Check the Debugger to look for recent issues and errors on your account.
Check the Call logs and/or SMS logs to verify your requests were received and processed.
Check Twilio's Status page to make sure there are no issues our outages affecting your service.

If you do not manage your own Twilio account, we recommend that you start by contacting the support team of the third party application. They will then be able to contact Twilio support directly with information about their software that is not available to end users, which will aid in our diagnosis and resolution of the problem.

Further Support

Outside of your Twilio account status and service troubleshooting, our help is likely to be limited. We are unable to provide support for any third party applications or products for issues like account status, and instructions on how to use or configure these products. Since you're a Twilio customer, and we want you to be successful, we must refer you to the application or service vendor to help answer these questions. They are in the best position to provide you timely and accurate information about the use and configuration of their application.

Please note not all Twilio features may be supported by your chosen 3rd party application or CRM. In this instance we recommend reaching out to the third party vendor in question to confirm availability.