Questions about ConnectSMS, answered plainly.

ConnectSMS is a Salesforce SMS and MMS app that connects Salesforce to your own Twilio account. Your team can text customers from Salesforce records, work conversations together in a shared inbox, run outreach to reports, campaigns and filtered records, and automate messaging with Flow, Apex and the Salesforce REST API.

How ConnectSMS works

Yes. Installing ConnectSMS from AgentExchange starts a 14-day free trial of the full edition, with every feature, and no credit card is required. After the trial, ConnectSMS is $120 per user per year. Twilio still bills your own Twilio account for anything you send during the trial, and Twilio's own trial accounts don't work with ConnectSMS, so connect an upgraded Twilio account.

Pricing

Yes. ConnectSMS is listed on Salesforce AgentExchange (formerly AppExchange), Salesforce's app marketplace. It installs from the listing as a managed package into your production org or a sandbox, and installing doesn't send anything: sending stays off until an admin finishes setup and turns it on.

Installation steps

ConnectSMS is built on the Salesforce Platform and installs as a managed package. Salesforce connects directly to your Twilio account, with no ConnectSMS servers in between. To receive replies you also need a public Salesforce Site, which setup walks you through.

A Twilio account with at least one number in a Messaging Service, a public Salesforce Site for incoming messages, and a Salesforce admin to work through the eight-step setup checklist: connect Twilio, sync business numbers, set up the webhook, give people access to numbers, assign permission sets, choose the records you can text, turn on background jobs and turn on sending.

Administration

Contacts, Leads, Accounts and Cases are set up out of the box. Admins can add other objects in Recipients and choose which phone fields ConnectSMS uses, in order.

Text from any object

Admins assign four permission sets: ConnectSMS User for everyday texting and the inbox, ConnectSMS Campaign Manager for outreach and shared templates, ConnectSMS Admin for setup, and ConnectSMS Automation for integration and agent users. People also need Send or View access to specific business numbers, granted in ConnectSMS Setup.

Roles and permissions

ConnectSMS is designed for the Salesforce mobile app: the inbox and the Text Messages component adapt to narrow screens, and updates arrive by polling where live events aren't available. ConnectSMS Setup can be reviewed on a phone, but settings are changed on a desktop computer.

Yes, with ConnectSMS outreach. A campaign manager chooses an audience from a Salesforce report, the members of a Salesforce Campaign, or records that match filters, writes the message, and sees exactly who will receive it before sending or scheduling. People who opted out, duplicate numbers and missing or invalid numbers are left out automatically.

Bulk SMS from Salesforce

Yes. In outreach, choose Members of a Salesforce Campaign to text its Contacts and Leads. The review step shows who will receive the message and who is left out and why. If the message uses Contact merge fields, campaign members who are Leads can't be filled in and aren't sent that message.

SMS campaigns in Salesforce

Yes. ConnectSMS adds ten invocable actions to Flow Builder under ConnectSMS, including Send Text Message (with an optional Send At time to schedule it), Preview Text Message, Get Text Message Status and Reply to Text Conversation. Flow sends go through the same access, opt-out and policy checks as sending from the screen.

Send SMS from Salesforce Flow

Yes. The global Apex class ConnectSMSApi sends, previews, cancels and checks messages without making callouts, so it's safe in triggers. External systems call the same actions through Salesforce's standard REST actions endpoint, for example csms__CsmsSendMessageAction, and business errors come back as success = false rather than as HTTP errors.

Automation reference

ConnectSMS's actions are global invocable actions written for Flow and AI agents, so your admin can add them to Agentforce agents as agent actions. ConnectSMS doesn't install an agent or topic for you, and messages an agent sends go through the same checks as any other message.

Automation and agents

When a customer replies with one of Twilio's standard opt-out keywords, such as STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE or CANCEL, ConnectSMS records the opt-out and stops texting that number; START, YES or UNSTOP opts them back in. Opt-outs are always enforced, checked when a message is requested and again when it is sent, and shown to users in the composer and inbox.

Consent and opt-outs

No software can do that on its own. ConnectSMS gives you controls that help your team apply the policies you choose, including opt-out enforcement, quiet hours for outreach and automation, number-level access and an audit log. You remain responsible for consent and for the rules that apply to your messages.

Messages and conversations are private. People see the conversations on business numbers they have View or Send access to, and admins see all of them, including texts to Twilio numbers that aren't set up in ConnectSMS.

Security and permissions