> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tryoto.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# SMS, email and WhatsApp providers

> Send customer messages through your own SMS provider, mail server and WhatsApp Business account, chosen from Gulf, Turkish and international providers.

Every message OTO sends a customer goes out through an account you own — your SMS provider, your mail server, your WhatsApp Business account. OTO composes and triggers the message; the sending relationship stays yours.

## Why bring your own account

| Consequence | What it means in practice |
| - | - |
| **The sender is you** | The SMS arrives from your sender name, the email from your domain, the WhatsApp message from your verified business. Not from a platform the customer has never heard of. |
| **The rate is yours** | You pay your provider at whatever you negotiated, rather than a resold per-message price. |
| **The deliverability is yours** | Sender registration, domain reputation and local routing stay with the provider you already cleared them with. |
| **Switching is a settings change** | Providers can be connected side by side and swapped without touching a single message template. |

> [!TIP]
>
> **In this region, sender identity is a registration, not a preference**
>
> Sender names for SMS are registered with operators, and an unregistered sender is filtered rather than delivered. The same is true of a WhatsApp Business account, which Meta verifies before it will send anything.
>
> That work is already done in the account you hold with your provider. Routing messages through someone else's account would mean doing it again, under their name — which is the real reason this is worth keeping in your hands.

## SMS providers

**Settings → Customer Notifs → SMS** has three tabs: **SMS Settings**, **SMS Providers** and **Connected SMS Providers**.

The catalog covers the Gulf, Türkiye and international gateways — including **STC**, **Unifonic**, **Mobily**, **Zain**, **Msegat**, **Taqnyat**, **4jawaly**, **Mrasel**, **Bevatel**, **BabSMS**, **Hi SMS**, **iMissive**, **Mshastra**, **GoInfinito**, **TurkeySMS** and **Twilio**.

Connecting one takes four fields: a **Connection Name**, a **Status** toggle, your registered **Sender Name** and the provider's **Token**. More than one can be connected and active at a time.

> [!NOTE]
>
> **Two providers is a reasonable posture, not redundancy for its own sake**
>
> SMS gateways fail regionally and occasionally, and a tracking message that does not arrive becomes a support call within the hour.
>
> Because connections sit side by side and the message content is separate from the provider, keeping a second one configured costs nothing until the day you need it.

## Email

**Settings → Customer Notifs → Email** carries an **Email Accounts** tab where you add your own sending account: the **Email** address, the **Mail Server (Host)**, and the **Display Email** and **Display Name** the customer sees.

Sending from your own domain is what keeps order emails out of the promotions tab — the reputation that gets them delivered is attached to your domain, not to a shared one.

## WhatsApp Business

**Settings → Customer Notifs → Whatsapp**. **Add Connection** runs in three steps: **Instructions**, **Credentials**, **Settings**.

It connects to your own Meta infrastructure, so the prerequisites are Meta's: a **Meta business account**, a **WhatsApp app linked to it**, and a developer account with the right permissions. Credentials are a **WhatsApp Business ID** and a **User Access Token**, and **Verify Connection** checks them before the connection is saved.

> [!WARNING]
>
> **WhatsApp templates are approved by Meta, not by OTO**
>
> Message content on WhatsApp runs through templates that Meta reviews and categorizes as **utility** or **marketing**. A template sits at **Approved** or **Need Parameter Check** until that review completes.
>
> Plan for the review time before a launch depends on it. OTO ships ready-made templates — marked **Created by OTO** in the template list — which is the way to avoid starting from an empty library and an approval queue.

## Seeing what actually happened

**Settings → Logs → Notification Logs** records every message with its **Provider**, its **Status**, and the provider's own raw **Gateway Response** — message id, segment count, cost and remaining balance.

> [!TIP]
>
> **The gateway response is where a silent failure explains itself**
>
> A message that did not arrive looks identical from OTO's side to one that did, until you read what the provider said back. Rejections for a duplicate send, an unregistered sender or an exhausted balance all surface here and nowhere else.
>
> It is also where per-message cost and segment count live, which is the honest answer to why an SMS bill is higher than expected — long messages and non-Latin characters split into more segments than people assume.

## What OTO provides on top

The provider carries the message. Everything about *which* message, to whom, in what language and under what branding is configured in [Customer Notification](https://docs.tryoto.com/modules/customer-notification/overview.md) — per brand, per country and per message type, independent of who sends it.

## Related

* [SMS](https://docs.tryoto.com/modules/customer-notification/sms.md) · [Email](https://docs.tryoto.com/modules/customer-notification/email.md) · [WhatsApp](https://docs.tryoto.com/modules/customer-notification/whatsapp.md) — the message content itself.
* [Branded pages](https://docs.tryoto.com/modules/customer-notification/branded-pages.md) — where a message's link lands.
* [Integrations overview](https://docs.tryoto.com/integrations/overview.md) — the other connection types.


## Related topics

- [Integrations overview](https://docs.tryoto.com/integrations/overview.md)
- [Customer Notification](https://docs.tryoto.com/modules/customer-notification/overview.md)
- [Platform architecture](https://docs.tryoto.com/get-started/architecture.md)


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