SMS Notifications with Vonage
PingPing integrates with Vonage (formerly known as Nexmo) so you can receive SMS text messages the moment your website goes down. With PingPing's fastest 30-second check interval, you can receive an SMS within seconds of an outage starting, which is far faster than services that check every 5 minutes.
Why Does PingPing Use Vonage for SMS?
Sending SMS messages requires a registered phone number and a telecommunications provider. Rather than baking a single SMS provider into PingPing (and passing that cost on to every user), PingPing lets you connect your own Vonage account. This gives you full control over which phone number the messages come from, which country's regulations you comply with, and how much you spend on SMS credits.
Vonage is a widely used communication API, trusted by companies of all sizes. If you knew it by the name Nexmo, that is the same service: Vonage acquired Nexmo and rebranded the product.
How to Set Up Vonage with PingPing
Step 1 - Create a Vonage account. Sign up at the Vonage dashboard. New accounts come with a small amount of free SMS credit for testing.
Step 2 - Get your API credentials. In the Vonage dashboard, locate your API Key and API Secret. These are displayed on the main dashboard page after login.
Step 3 - Buy or connect a phone number. In Vonage, purchase a virtual phone number for your country. This is the "from" number that will appear on the SMS. A paid Vonage account is required for this step.
Step 4 - Configure PingPing. Go to your PingPing notification channels page at https://pingping.io/account/notification-channels. Create a new channel, select "SMS" as the type, and fill in the following fields:
API Key - from your Vonage dashboard
API Secret - from your Vonage dashboard
From telephone number - the Vonage virtual number you purchased
To telephone number - the mobile number that should receive downtime alerts
Step 5 - Assign the channel to your monitors. Attach the new SMS notification channel to one or more of your monitored websites. The next time PingPing detects downtime on those sites, you will receive an SMS.
Troubleshooting
If you are not receiving SMS messages, check that your Vonage account has sufficient credit and that the "to" number is in international format with country code (e.g. +1 for the US). Also verify that your Vonage account's messaging settings allow outbound SMS to the destination country.