Commercial gateways may be better suited for your project if you have higher volume messaging. Below are two options to do this.
Leverage an Existing Gateway in CommCare
CommCare has a set number of existing custom gateways in its system that are only available in certain countries. To see a full list of available gateways, go to Messaging -> SMS Connectivity in your CommCareHQ project space.
There are a few global gateways (US phone numbers) but these are more expensive for sending and receiving international messages. Twilio gateways use phone numbers maintained by CommCareHQ to send messages inside the US and a limited number of international countries. The per message rates can be high based on the country destination.
Please note that Dimagi does not create new custom gateways upon request, and we cannot guarantee the reliability of gateways as they operate independently of CommCare.
Set up a Custom Gateway
Please note the documentation below requires more technical expertise The documentation below may require knowledge of more technical software management and development topics.
Alternatively, you can establish a relationship with a commercial SMS gateway service provider that provides the local regional coverage that you require. These include both international service providers that offer services in many regions, as well as local service providers who specialize in a single region.
Please note that this approach requires more technical expertise.
Depending on the chosen service provider, these may require adding a new SMS Backend to the CommCare HQ open source codebase.
For information on how a developer can contribute to this codebase, see https://github.com/dimagi/commcare-hq/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.rst .
Here is more information about CommCare Messaging APIs: SMS APIs