# Sending your first SMS

Getting SMS working on Bird, from an empty workspace to a message on your phone.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDbqAbYJAfA (2:17)

## What we cover

- Getting an SMS sender
- Sending your first message from the dashboard
- Sending that same message from the API

## Transcript

_Auto-generated from the video._

Hey. Welcome to Bird. Hey, it's Bob. Today we're getting started with SMS. When you've created your account and you navigate to SMS, you'll land on the onboarding screen. Uh and from here there's actually two easy ways to get going with SMS. The first one is to copy the setup prompt, which you can share with any AI agent that you use. And it's a simple prompt instructing the AI to download the CLI and to start integrating SMS into your project. Um the alternative is just follow this quick setup checklist, um which consists of four simple steps, which we're going to do just now. So, the first one is just to create an API key. This is of course to authenticate yourself and to link the calls to your account. Make sure to always keep it secret. We only show it once, so do make sure to store it.

Um and you can always create a new API key in the API key section of your account. Then you need to select your first destination country. Uh the way that SMS works within Bird is that we um have enablement destinations, which means that you need to enable the countries that you want to send to. Um so, we're starting with the Netherlands. Um we can always add more destinations at a later stage under the destination tab in our Then you do need to top up your wallet to get going. Um pricing for messaging can be found on our website.

Um and it's on a per destination basis. And then there's a step of actually sending your SMS. As you can see, we already have different languages enabled, um making it pretty straightforward for you to get started. So, you can copy the code snippets and just paste it into your uh project. Or again, we have that copy for AI. And then here we can actually guide you towards whatever tool that you're using to make it more efficient for you to get started. Alternatively, you can just fill out a number in here.

And then we can send an SMS. And then you can see that the SMS was sent successfully and then you can check your phone to get to the recipient. That's it. It's as easy as that and I'll see you in the next one.

## More SMS guides

- [Sending an SMS with a template](/it-it/learn/sms/sms-templates) — 3:20
- [Registering your SMS sender ID](/it-it/learn/sms/sms-sender-id) — 4:39
- [Control where your account can send](/it-it/learn/sms/sms-destinations) — 2:31
- [SMS segments: why one emoji doubles the cost](/it-it/learn/sms/sms-segments) — 4:33
- [SMS pumping explained](/it-it/learn/sms/sms-pumping) — 2:11

## Resources

- [Documentation](/it-it/documentazione)
- [Learn more about SMS](/it-it/prodotti/sms)