Switching SMS providers: a migration checklist for ecommerce brands

1. Confirm eligibility and migration scope first

Before cancelling the existing service, show the prospective provider your website, products, destinations, consent journey, and representative messages. Ask it to assess campaigns, order updates, recovery, and support separately. If you are leaving after a rejection, include the original decision rather than starting with an incomplete account of the problem.

Create a written scope with three columns: available today, requires manual work, and not available. Ask for evidence of import fields, export access, supported integrations, and reply handling. Treat a planned feature as unavailable for the cutover unless its release and your access are confirmed.

2. Move permission evidence alongside the numbers

A list of phone numbers is only one part of the migration. Preserve the identity of the brand that collected permission, message purpose, source, date, and the wording shown at signup. Keep the underlying evidence accessible to the people responsible for the program. Verify that your export contains those fields before closing the old account.

Moving software for the same brand differs from transferring permission to a different business. Twilio’s messaging policy ties consent to the sender and subject and prohibits buying, selling, renting, or transferring consent between parties. If the sender, audience use, or subject changes, review the permission requirements rather than assuming an import authorizes it.

• Export subscriber identity, permission source, timestamp, purpose, and current state.
• Retain historical signup language or a reference to the evidence.
• Preserve opt-out timestamps and suppression reasons separately.
• Protect the files and give access only to the people handling the migration.

3. Make suppression a launch requirement

Import suppressions before any audience becomes eligible to send. Ask the new provider whether its suppression state is scoped to a number, campaign, brand, or account. Confirm how an import affects existing subscription states and whether later imports can overwrite an opt-out. Preserve the more restrictive status while resolving conflicting records.

Test with controlled records your team owns, including a subscribed contact and an opted-out contact. Verify that the stopped record remains excluded from campaigns and automations. Sending from a new number should never be used to bypass a person’s withdrawal of consent. Include opt-outs received during the migration in the final reconciliation.

4. Verify number and integration readiness

Ask whether your exact number can move, what documents are required, who manages the request, and whether a separate messaging setup is needed. Number portability, text enablement, registration, and verification are distinct questions. Obtain a provider-specific plan for each rather than assuming a voice transfer completes every SMS requirement.

Inventory checkout capture, recovery triggers, customer replies, reporting, and any customer-service handoffs. Rebuild only supported workflows and test their triggers with your own records. Conversation history may need an archive instead of a live import. Verify export and retention options before losing access to the former service.

5. Use a cutover checklist with a named owner

Assign an owner for each workflow and a single person who authorizes the changeover. Pause old scheduled campaigns and automated sends before enabling replacements. Reconcile new subscribers and opt-outs, confirm which inbox receives replies, and record the final switch time. Avoid having two systems independently act on the same order event.

Start with controlled end-to-end tests: signup, permitted message, reply, opt-out, and blocked follow-up. Agree when to pause the launch if results are wrong. A fallback plan must also preserve current suppressions; restoring an old export without newer opt-outs can reintroduce the original problem.

6. Compare results using consistent definitions

After cutover, compare attempted messages, segments, delivery results, failures, replies, and opt-outs using the same definitions. Check attribution windows before comparing revenue reports. A change in a reporting rule can look like a change in performance even when customer behavior is unchanged.

For OneMoreSend, discuss the migration scope during the demo and get the required imports, sender work, integrations, and charges confirmed in writing. This checklist describes what a buyer should validate; it is not a claim that every export, number transfer, or historical-data import is currently supported.

Common questions