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Transform your SMS customer support with an intelligent AI chatbot that answers questions from your knowledge base automatically, 24/7 — using your own Vonage account.
The SMS channel is available on all plans, including Free. Human takeover in the unified inbox requires a Pro plan.

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Why Connect SMS (Vonage)?

Instant AI Responses

Customers get immediate answers based on your website’s knowledge base

24/7 Availability

AI responds day and night, even when your team is offline

Human Takeover

Support agents can jump into any conversation from the dashboard (Pro)

Reach Every Phone

SMS works on any phone. No app or internet connection is needed

Multi-Language

AI supports 100+ languages for international customers

Knowledge-Powered

Answers based on your website’s content and documentation

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What Can the SMS Bot Do?

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Answer Customer Questions Instantly

Your customers can text questions about your products, services, or content: Example Questions:

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Human Agent Handoff & Unified Inbox

SMS conversations appear in your Live Support unified inbox alongside website widget and other platform conversations. Each conversation shows an SMS badge so you always know the source platform. How agent replies work:
  1. Go to Live Support in your dashboard
  2. Find the SMS conversation (look for the SMS badge)
  3. Click to open and type your reply
  4. Your message is sent directly to the customer’s phone
  5. The AI remains paused while you’re active in the conversation
The AI resumes automatically when you leave the conversation.
Agent replies are limited to 10 SMS segments. Longer replies are rejected with a clear error message. Keep SMS replies short.

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How AI Replies Work on SMS

SMS is a short, plain-text channel. AI replies follow these rules:
  • Short and plain: The AI writes short, plain-text replies. There is no formatting, no buttons, and no images in AI replies.
  • 4-segment cap: Each AI reply is at most 4 SMS segments. Longer answers are cut to fit.
  • Daily cap: Each sender gets at most 20 AI replies in any rolling 24-hour window. Once a sender reaches the cap, the AI stays quiet for that sender until older replies fall out of the 24-hour window. Human agents can still reply from the inbox.
  • Text-only inbound: SMS inbound is text-only. If a customer sends photos or videos, they arrive on a different channel (for example MMS) and BubblaV does not process them as SMS.

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Prerequisites

  • A Vonage account (sign up free)
  • In the Vonage dashboard under Settings, set SMS settings to Messages API. Older accounts may still be on “SMS API” — with that setting, inbound SMS never reaches BubblaV
  • An API key and API secret from the Vonage dashboard Settings page
  • The signature secret from the same Settings page. Vonage signs every webhook with it and there is no API to fetch it, so you paste it at connect time
  • An SMS-capable virtual number in your Vonage account
  • For US traffic: 10DLC campaign registration in your Vonage account
  • Active BubblaV account with a website
  • Website with knowledge base content (crawled pages)
Trial accounts: Vonage trial accounts can only send messages to phone numbers you have verified in your Vonage account, and are limited to a low number of outbound messages per day. Upgrade to message all customers.
Only the linked number routes to BubblaV. BubblaV links the one number you pick to its own Vonage application. Your other numbers and Vonage applications are never touched.

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Setup Steps

1

Check your Vonage SMS settings

In the Vonage dashboard, open Settings and confirm SMS settings is set to Messages API. If it says “SMS API”, switch it to Messages API first.
2

Get your Vonage credentials

On the same Settings page, copy your API key, your API secret, and your signature secret.
3

Navigate to Integrations

Go to Dashboard → Your Website → Integrations and find the SMS (Vonage) card.
4

Click Connect

Click Connect to open the SMS connect dialog.
5

Paste your credentials

Paste the API key, API secret, and signature secret. BubblaV validates them and loads the SMS-capable numbers from your Vonage account.
6

Choose a sending number

Select one SMS-capable number as the sender. BubblaV creates a dedicated Vonage application named BubblaV, registers its webhooks, and links the chosen number to it. If the number is currently linked to another application, BubblaV relinks it and restores the previous link when you disconnect.
7

Verify Connection

The SMS integration should now show Connected. Open the configuration page to view the sending number and application.
8

Test the Bot

Send an SMS to the linked number to verify the AI responds correctly.
Switching the sending number later starts new conversation threads. Old conversations keep their history but no longer match the new channel.

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Using Twilio, Telnyx, and Vonage Together

You can connect all SMS providers at the same time — for example a Twilio number for one market and a Vonage number for another. Each line keeps its own conversations. A STOP from a customer is shared: opting out on one SMS line opts them out on the other SMS lines too (per phone number).

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Managing Your Integration

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View Connection Details

From the SMS configuration page, you can see:
  • Connected sending number and Vonage application
  • Connection status

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Pause and Resume

Pausing the integration stops AI replies and removes the webhooks from the BubblaV application in your Vonage account. Resuming re-applies them. The number stays linked to the application.

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Disconnect

To remove the SMS integration:
  1. Go to Dashboard → Your Website → Integrations
  2. Find the SMS (Vonage) card and disconnect it
Note: Disconnecting stops the AI from responding. BubblaV restores the link your number had before you connected (its previous application, or its per-number inbound URL) and deletes the dedicated BubblaV application. Your other Vonage applications are never touched.

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STOP, START, and HELP

SMS customers control their own consent:
  • STOP (or STOPALL, STOP ALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, REVOKE, OPTOUT): the customer is unsubscribed. The AI and human agents cannot send messages to an opted-out customer. The conversation shows an “Opted out of SMS” badge.
  • START (or YES, UNSTOP): the customer is subscribed again.
  • HELP: the customer gets a short help reply from BubblaV: “Your business name: reply STOP to opt out.”
Vonage does not handle STOP, START, or HELP for SMS — BubblaV is the only opt-out enforcement. BubblaV records the opt-out in every SMS conversation of that phone number, on every Live Support ticket for that phone number, and on the customer’s visitor profile. The opt-out is shared with connected Twilio and Telnyx lines for the same phone number. If BubblaV cannot read the opt-out state, it does not send.

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Costs

You pay Vonage for every SMS you send. Vonage bills per segment:
  • A segment is up to 160 characters in GSM-7 encoding (plain Latin text, single SMS), up to 1530 characters (10 segments) per message.
  • If the message contains characters outside GSM-7 (for example Vietnamese text or emoji), the message is sent as UCS-2. Then each segment holds only 70 characters, and every character costs about 2.3× more.
  • Long messages are split into multiple segments and billed as such.
Tips to save money:
  • Keep AI replies short. The 4-segment cap also caps the cost per AI reply.

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Troubleshooting

Vonage retries webhooks that are not acknowledged. BubblaV acknowledges immediately and deduplicates, so a retried message never produces a second AI reply.

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FAQ

No. Copy your API key, API secret, and signature secret from the Vonage dashboard, choose a sending number, and BubblaV creates the Vonage application and links the number automatically — no code required.
Yes. Each SMS provider is a separate integration with its own number and conversations. A STOP on one line also opts the customer out on the other SMS lines.
Check the daily cap (20 AI replies per sender in a rolling 24-hour window) or the opt-out badge on the conversation. Both pause AI replies. Human agents can still reply (unless the customer opted out).
Yes. The customer texts START to your number. Vonage does not keep its own block list for SMS, so only BubblaV enforces the opt-out.
Yes. The SMS channel works on all plans, including Free. Human takeover in the unified inbox requires a Pro plan.

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Next Steps