Two-way SMS lets your application both send messages to a customer and receive their reply — perfect for conversational support, surveys, USSD-style menus and SMS-driven workflows on any feature phone.

How it works

1. You send outbound SMS using the standard Bulk SMS endpoint — the request payload is identical.
2. Customers reply by sending an SMS back to your dedicated shortcode or longcode.
3. Sozuri forwards the reply to your Received Message URL as a JSON POST, in real time.

Sending the outbound message

Two-way and one-way SMS share the same request format. Use the Send Bulk SMS endpoint with your registered shortcode as the from field.

Receiving the reply

When a customer texts your shortcode, Sozuri immediately posts the message to your configured Received Message URL. Configure the URL in Manage API › Callback URLs.

The callback body looks like this:

POST https://your-app.com/sozuri/incoming
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "project": "yourproject_name",
    "number": "254725164293",
    "shortcode": "25145",
    "message": "Hello, what is the location of your Nairobi office?",
    "messageId": "SMSGkjiPkX78654kls",
    "channel": "interactive",
    "status": "success",
    "network": "safaricom",
    "type": "interactive",
    "timestamp": "1603713484"
}

Optional callback authentication

For extra safety, you can register an Auth Key on the project. Sozuri will include it as a parameter on every callback so your server can verify the request really came from us before processing it.