Post by SMS

Why SMS

The WhatsApp connector and plain SMS are the same product behind one phone number. Everything below works identically on both. The reason SMS exists separately is that it needs nothing: no app install, no account on a messaging service, no data connection. If a phone can send a text, it can post.

That matters more often than it sounds. A conference with no signal but working SMS. A phone with a full storage card. A client who will text you a photo and will not install anything. Somebody's parent.

Because SMS has no formatting, replies come back as plain text rather than the bold command names WhatsApp gets. Nothing else differs.

Link your phone

Go to Settings → Messaging in DemandBird. You will see a linking code and a QR code.

From the phone you want to text from, send:

LINK-A1B2C3

to the DemandBird number shown on that page. You get a confirmation text back, and from then on that number is you.

One phone number per user. If you text from a number DemandBird does not recognise, you get the linking instructions back once, and then silence — the number is not published anywhere except that settings page, so an unrecognised text is almost always somebody who lost the LINK- prefix rather than a stranger.

SMS and WhatsApp are on Business and Agency. A linked phone on a Pro account gets a reply pointing at the upgrade rather than a draft.

What you can text

You do not have to memorise any of this. Text help for the list, or just describe what you want in your own words — an unrecognised message is answered conversationally rather than silently saved as a draft.

The [ID] in all of these is the short id DemandBird prints next to each draft when you text drafts.

Texting a photo

Attach a photo and DemandBird looks at it, then writes a post about what is in it — in your voice, with your workspace's brand identity applied, the same as any other draft. Add a caption to the message and it is used as context for what the post should be about.

You can attach up to ten images to one message. HEIC from an iPhone is handled; DemandBird converts it before anything reads it.

If you send a video, or something the image model cannot read, the file is attached to a draft as-is rather than described.

Your words stay your words

There are two different things you can ask for, and DemandBird keeps them apart on purpose:

• write a post about X runs the full Voice Engine. It learns from your past posts, applies your workspace's positioning, and shapes the result for a platform.
• save: X stores exactly what you typed. Not tidied, not rephrased, not "improved."

That second one is a promise. If you texted in a sentence you had already worked on, quietly rewriting it would be worse than not having the feature.

Anything that is neither — a question, a half-thought, "what's going out today?" — is answered as a conversation. It is never silently turned into a draft.

One workspace

SMS is pinned to the account's default workspace. There is no way to say which client you mean in a text message, so drafts lists that one workspace's posts and publish [ID] can only reach them.

For an agency, that means client work is not reachable over SMS at all. That is deliberate: the alternative is drafts returning every client's posts in one list with ids that publish to any of them.

Replies take a moment

A draft runs several model passes and takes 20 to 40 seconds. That is longer than a text message round-trip usually feels, so you get an immediate acknowledgement and then the real reply lands a little later. Nothing is lost in between.

Stopping

Text stop at any time. Your phone number is cleared from your DemandBird profile and nothing further is sent. Text the linking code again to reconnect.

Standard message and data rates apply — DemandBird does not charge for texts, your carrier might.