Connect your own Twilio account to DialRidge

Short version: in Twilio, create a Standard API key and, if you will text, a Messaging Service. In DialRidge, open Settings › Telephony, choose Bring your own Twilio, enter your Account SID and the API key, and press Test connection. Once Test has read your account, pick your TwiML app, Messaging Service and caller ID from dropdowns — or let DialRidge create the TwiML app for you — then Save telephony. Point your number's incoming-call setting at DialRidge so leads who call back reach you. The carrier registration that makes your texts deliverable is the part people skip.

What you will need

• A credit card for Twilio — you will be billed by Twilio directly, separately from DialRidge.
• The business details carrier registration asks for: your legal business name, business address and, if you have one, your EIN.
• A public web page describing your business, and, if you will text, a page stating how people opt in and how they opt out. Carriers check.
• Patience with carrier review. Texting is not reliable until your registration is approved; calling does not wait for it.

1. Create and upgrade the Twilio account

1. Sign up at twilio.com

   Verify your email and your mobile number when prompted.

2. Upgrade out of trial

   This one is not optional. A Twilio trial account can only call and text numbers you have manually verified, and it injects a spoken trial message at the start of every call. Add a payment method and upgrade before you do anything else, or you will spend an hour debugging a limitation rather than a bug.

2. Buy a number

1. Phone Numbers › Manage › Buy a number
2. Filter for the area code you want

   Match the market you actually work.

3. Confirm both Voice and SMS are ticked in the capabilities

   A voice-only number will dial fine and then quietly fail to text, which is a confusing afternoon.

3. Account SID

On the Twilio console home page, top left, under Account Info. It starts with AC. Copy it somewhere safe.

4. API key and secret

1. Go to Account › API keys & tokens

   Reachable from the account menu at the top right of the Twilio console.

2. Create an API key

   Choose the Standard key type. You do not need a Main key, and you should not create one for DialRidge. Name it something you will recognise in six months — dialridge works.

3. Copy both values immediately

   You get an SID starting with SK and a Secret. The secret is shown exactly once. Close that page without copying it and your only option is to delete the key and make a new one.

5. Messaging Service for texts

Skip this only if you will never text a lead. A Messaging Service is the container the carriers register against, and it is what makes delivery reporting work properly.

1. Go to Messaging › Services and create one

   Name it DialRidge. When asked what you will use it for, choose the option covering notifications and conversational messaging with your own customers.

2. Add your number to the sender pool

   The service is useless until a number is inside it.

3. Point inbound messages at DialRidge

   In the service’s Integration settings, set the incoming-message webhook to https://api.dialridge.app/twilio/sms-inbound using POST. This is how a reply from a lead reaches your Messages tab — and how a STOP reaches the contact’s record, so the opt-out is on file in DialRidge. Without it Twilio still honours the STOP at the carrier level, but your own records will go on showing a contact who agreed to your texts.

You do not need to copy the Messaging Service SID. DialRidge offers it in a dropdown once Test connection has read your account.

6. 10DLC registration — do not skip this

In the United States, texting business traffic from a standard 10-digit number requires registration with the carriers. It is called A2P 10DLC. It is bureaucratic, it carries its own fees, and it is not optional in practice: unregistered traffic gets filtered, throttled, or silently dropped. Your Twilio console will show the messages as sent. The lead will simply never receive them.

1. Messaging › Regulatory Compliance › A2P 10DLC
2. Register your Brand

   Legal business name exactly as registered, business address, website, and your EIN if you have one. Mismatches here are a common cause of rejection — the name must match your business record exactly, not your trading name.

3. Register a Campaign

   Describe what you actually send, and provide two real sample messages. Include your opt-out language — something like Reply STOP to opt out — in the samples themselves.

4. Attach the campaign to your Messaging Service
5. Wait for approval

   Call away in the meantime; hold the texting.

7. Fill it in, test it, then save

In DialRidge, open Settings › Telephony and choose Bring your own Twilio. Required fields carry a red *.

You need one credential pair, not both: the Account SID plus either the API Key SID and Secret, or your Auth Token.

1. Enter the Account SID and your credential pair

   Do not save yet.

2. Press Test connection

   It checks what is on the screen against your live Twilio account — your credentials, that your TwiML app points at DialRidge, your Messaging Service if you gave one, that your caller ID is a number your account can call from, and where calls into that number currently go. It reports Connection OK with the number of checks passed, or names the field that failed, under that field. Pressing Test writes nothing.

3. Pick from your own account

   Once Test has read your account, the TwiML App SID, Messaging Service SID and Caller ID fields offer a Choose from your Twilio account… dropdown. A TwiML app that points somewhere other than DialRidge is marked with the address it points at. You can still type a value instead.

4. Fix whatever it names, test again

   Each problem appears under the field it belongs to.

5. Press Save telephony

Caller ID must be in E.164 format: a plus sign, the country code, then the number, no spaces, brackets or dashes. +15615550142, not (561) 555-0142.

8. The TwiML app

This is the piece that tells Twilio where to send a call when your browser softphone places one. It has to exist inside your own Twilio account, and its Voice Request URL has to point back at DialRidge. Point it anywhere else and the softphone is wired to a different service, which looks exactly like “DialRidge can't make calls.”

The easy way: let DialRidge create it

With your Account SID and credential pair entered, press Create the TwiML app for me. It explains what it will do, and only on Yes, create it does it create an app called DialRidge Softphone in your Twilio account, already pointed at DialRidge. That is the only change DialRidge makes to your Twilio account; it never edits or deletes anything you already have, and pressing it twice reuses the same app. It fills the TwiML App SID for you — press Save telephony to keep it.

By hand, if you prefer

1. Go to Voice › Manage › TwiML apps and create one
2. Set the Voice Request URL

   Paste exactly this, and set the method to HTTP POST:

   https://api.dialridge.app/twilio/voice-direct

   Leave the other URL fields empty.

3. Save, then pick it in DialRidge

   It appears in the TwiML App SID dropdown after Test connection.

9. Your number's incoming-call setting

Separately from the TwiML app, your phone number has its own setting for calls coming in. In Twilio Console › Phone Numbers › your number › Voice Configuration, set A call comes in to a webhook, method POST:

https://api.dialridge.app/twilio/voice-inbound

That forwards a lead who calls your number back to your press-1 callback number, set in Settings › Preferences. If you are on a softphone call at the time, or your phone does not answer, the caller is offered voicemail instead, and the message shows in the Calls tab.

10. Verify it works

1. Test connection reports Connection OK

   With the number of checks passed, and nothing flagged under any field.

2. Dial your own mobile from the Dialer tab

   Press Connect softphone first. You should hear it ring in your headset, your mobile should show your number as the caller, and the call should appear in the Calls tab afterwards.

3. Call your number from another phone

   With a press-1 callback number saved, that phone should ring. This proves the incoming-call setting.

4. Send yourself one text

   It should arrive, and appear in the Messages tab with a delivered status. If it shows as sent but never arrives, that is 10DLC, not DialRidge.

What Twilio will charge you

On bring-your-own, Twilio bills you directly and DialRidge never sees that invoice. Expect a monthly charge per phone number, per-minute charges on calls in both directions, per-segment charges on texts, and carrier registration fees. Twilio publishes current rates on their pricing pages; they change, so check rather than trusting a number in a blog post.

Your DialRidge plan price is unchanged — you are paying for the software, not the minutes. What you save is the $25/month managed-number fee; what you take on is the account and the paperwork.

Troubleshooting

If Test connection passes and calls still will not place, email hello@dialridge.com with the time you tried and the number you dialed. Never email us your API key secret or Auth Token — we do not need them, and anything sent over email should be treated as compromised and rotated.