---
layout: article
title: SMS delivery
description: Set up SMS services for your self-hosted Appwrite instance. Discover how to configure SMS notifications, verification, and messaging for your applications.
---

Appwrite supports phone authentication, which allows users to create accounts and log in using SMS messages. Appwrite requires an SMS provider to be set up before using Phone authentication.

**Setting up Appwrite Messaging?**

This page describes how to setup messaging for your self-hosted Appwrite instance to send one-time passwords during phone login.

If you are looking to send custom messages for promotions, reminders, and other purposes, view the [documentation for Appwrite Messaging](/docs/products/messaging) documentation.

# SMS providers

Appwrite supports a growing list of SMS providers that you can choose from. Choose one from the list below and set up an account.

|   | SMS provider | Create account | Get credentials |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | Twilio | [Website](https://www.twilio.com) | [Documentation](https://www.twilio.com/docs/iam/access-tokens#step-2-api-key) |
| | Textmagic | [Website](https://www.textmagic.com) | [Documentation](https://www.textmagic.com/docs/api/start/#How-to-obtain-the-API-credentials) |
| | Telesign | [Website](https://www.telesign.com) | [Documentation](https://support.telesign.com/s/article/Find-Customer-ID-and-API-Key) |
| | MSG91 | [Website](https://msg91.com) | [Documentation](https://msg91.com/help/where-can-i-find-my-authentication-key) |
| | Vonage | [Website](https://www.vonage.ca/) | [Documentation](https://developer.vonage.com/en/account/secret-management) |

# Environment variables

You will need to configure these [environment variables](https://appwrite.io/docs/environment-variables#phone) and restart your Appwrite containers before you can use phone authentication.

**URL encode**

Ensure the values you insert in the `_APP_SMS_PROVIDER` placeholders are [URL encoded](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Percent-encoding) if they contain any non-alphanumeric characters.

| Provider | \_APP\_SMS\_PROVIDER | \_APP\_SMS\_FROM |
| -------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- |
| Twilio | `sms://<ACCOUNT SID>:<AUTH TOKEN>@twilio` | `<TWILIO PHONE NUMBER>` |
| Textmagic| `sms://<USERNAME>:<API KEY>@text-magic` | `<PHONE NUMBER OR SENDER ID>` |
| TeleSign | `sms://<CUSTOMER ID>:<API KEY>@telesign` | `<TELESIGN PHONE NUMBER>` |
| MSG91 | `sms://<SENDER ID>:<AUTH KEY>@msg91` | `<FLOW ID>` |
| Vonage | `sms://<API KEY>:<API SECRET>@vonage` | `<PHONE NUMBER OR BRAND NAME>` |

**Applying changes**

After editing your `docker-compose.yml` or `.env` files, you will need to recreate your Appwrite stack by running the following compose command in your terminal.

```sh
docker compose up -d
```

You can verify if the changes have been successfully applied by running this command:

```sh
docker compose exec appwrite vars
```