SMS from your own SIM

You pair a spare Android phone to your restaurant, and it sends your order messages as text messages using its own SIM. It works alongside WhatsApp, not instead of it. We charge nothing for it — your mobile operator bills the texts exactly as it bills any other message you send, so the cost is whatever your own plan charges.

Because not every customer has WhatsApp, and a WhatsApp connection can drop. A text reaches any working mobile number without an app, an account or an internet connection. The most common use is the middle setting — only if WhatsApp fails — so a customer whose confirmation could not be delivered still hears from you.

Open Settings → Messaging → SMS from your own SIM and that screen answers it for the day you are asking. When a release is published it carries a Download the app (.apk) link straight to the file; when there is not one yet it says so plainly instead of leaving you hunting for a button that is not there. Trust that screen over this page: it reads the current release, which a help page written weeks earlier cannot. Everything else described here — pairing, choosing what goes by text, the delay between texts and the SMS history — is built and works the moment a phone is paired.

Any Android phone running Android 5.0 or newer, which is essentially any Android phone still working. It needs a SIM that can send texts, and it needs to stay switched on. Treat it like a piece of kitchen equipment: plugged in, in one place, not the phone somebody takes home.

No. It needs an internet connection — wifi or mobile data, either is fine — and that is all. It checks in with us over the internet, so it can be anywhere. What matters is that it stays on and connected.

You can, but we would not. The app has to be exempt from your phone's battery saving to work reliably, it sends texts your customers will reply to, and unpairing it stops your restaurant's texts. A cheap dedicated handset avoids all three problems.

Settings → Messaging → SMS from your own SIM → Pair a phone. An eight-character code appears on the screen. Type it into the app on the phone — the letters and digits avoid anything that could be misread, so there is no 0 or O and no 1, I or L. The code stops working after ten minutes and can only be used once; press the button again for a fresh one.

One phone per restaurant. Pairing a second one replaces the first — the old phone stops sending. That is deliberate: two phones sharing a queue would either duplicate texts or race each other for them.

Because the app does not come from the Play Store. Android shows that warning for any app installed from elsewhere, whoever made it — it is about where the file came from, not what is in it. You will need to allow installation from the app you are downloading with (usually Chrome or Files), which the step-by-step guide walks through.

Almost always your phone's battery manager. Android's own power saving is handled by the app, but Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei and others each add their own, and those will close a background app whatever the app does about it. Find your brand in the guides on this page and turn its optimisation off for this app. This is the single most common reason a paired phone goes quiet.

Because each of those brands adds its own battery manager on top of Android's, and it closes background apps no matter what the app does — Samsung calls it Device Care and Sleeping apps, Xiaomi and Redmi need Autostart plus a locked recents card, Oppo and Realme call it App battery management, and Huawei and Honor hide it under App launch. Android's own setting is not enough on any of them. There is a step-by-step guide for each brand further down this page. This is the single most common reason a paired phone goes quiet.

The SMS settings screen shows when the phone last checked in. A phone that is on and connected checks in every few seconds, so anything older than a few minutes means it has been switched off, has lost its connection, or has been closed by the battery manager.

Order confirmations, status updates (accepted, on the way, delivered, cancelled) and marketing. Each is set separately and each starts switched off, so nothing changes until you choose it.

Yes, since 16 August 2026 — they were not included at first and this page used to say so. Both now appear on your SMS screen with the same three settings as everything else: off, only if WhatsApp fails, or always. They are sent hours or days after the order, not at the moment it is placed, so they go out with the rest of your scheduled messages rather than immediately.

Only if WhatsApp fails sends a text just when the WhatsApp message could not be delivered — the customer gets one message either way. Always sends both, every time. Always is occasionally right for an order confirmation, where a customer might miss one and see the other, and is usually wrong for everything else because the same news arrives twice.

Yes — it is one of the three message types, and it is off until you switch it on. Marketing texts follow the same rules as your WhatsApp marketing: the same sending hours, the same weekly cap per customer, and the same pause switch. Bear in mind that many countries regulate marketing texts more strictly than other messages, so check what applies where your customers are.

Mobile operators watch for SIM cards sending texts in rapid bursts, because that is what bulk spam looks like to them, and they block the line. The pause between texts is what keeps your SIM looking like a normal phone. You can set it on the SMS screen; there is a platform minimum you cannot go below, and the phone enforces its own minimum too, so it cannot burst even if it has not heard from us for a while.

There is no published limit from most operators — they use pattern detection rather than a fixed number — so we cannot give you an exact figure. As a rough guide, a few dozen to a couple of hundred a day from a normal SIM is ordinary use. If you need thousands, a consumer SIM is the wrong tool and a business bulk-SMS plan from your operator is the right one.

The message is queued and the phone has not picked it up yet. A phone that is on and connected collects messages every few seconds, so this should never last long. If it does, the phone is off, offline, or has been closed by its battery manager.

The phone tried and the network refused it. In order of likelihood: no credit on the SIM, no signal at that moment, or a number that cannot receive texts. The SMS history shows the message so you can read exactly what would have gone and phone the customer instead if it matters.

They wait. Nothing is thrown away — anything queued stays queued until a phone is paired again, and then goes out. The same is true if the phone is simply switched off for the night.

The message content is stored the same way your WhatsApp messages already are, so it can be shown to you in the SMS history and so support can help when something fails. It is deleted on the same 120-day schedule as everything else — see the Privacy page. The phone sends from your SIM directly to your customer; nothing about the text passes through another company's messaging service.

They see the phone number of the SIM in the paired phone, exactly as if you had texted them yourself. Every message names your restaurant in its first line for that reason.

The app checks for a newer version by itself and shows a banner when there is one. You tap it, download, and install over the top — nothing needs uninstalling and the pairing survives. There is no automatic updating, because that would need permissions over the whole phone that we are not willing to ask for.

Only the owner account, the same rule as connecting WhatsApp — pairing a device is setup. Managers can change which messages go by text and the delay between them, because those are day-to-day operations.

All of them, and each one is different — and on the big brands the menus also moved between Android versions, so the guides on this page are split by BOTH. Check your Android version first: Settings → About phone → Android version. Then pick the matching guide. Samsung has five (Android 7–8, 9–10, 11–12, 13–14, 15–16), Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO three, Vivo and iQOO three, Oppo, Realme and OnePlus three, and there is one each for Huawei, Honor, Infinix, Tecno and itel, Motorola, Nokia and HMD, and Google Pixel. If your phone is not listed, use the Pixel guide — it covers Android's own settings, which every phone has — then look in your own battery menu for anything called autostart, protected apps or background management.

No, and this is expected. Google Play Protect warns about every app that did not come from the Play Store, whoever wrote it, because it judges the source and not the contents. Ours cannot be on the Play Store: an app whose whole job is sending SMS on your behalf is not something Google lists. Tap 'Install anyway' — the option is sometimes behind 'More details'. If you would rather not see the warning at all, the guide on this page shows how to turn the scan off before you install.

Play Protect can remove a sideloaded app days after you installed it, without asking. If the phone has stopped sending and the app is simply gone, that is almost always what happened. Turn Play Protect's scanning off using the guide on this page, install the app again, and pair it with a fresh code. Your history and settings are safe — they live on our side, not on the phone.

The phone shows a permanent notification that reads Running — sending for <your restaurant> along with how many texts it has sent today. Swipe down from the top of the phone's screen to see it. If that notification is missing, the app is not running: open it and check. That notification is also what keeps Android from closing the app, so do not try to hide it.