Unfortunately, Twilio is no longer a viable option for sending SMS for personal use. If you want to send SMS you have to register a "campaign" and jump through a bunch of hoops that assume you're a company sending a large volume of application-generated messages (e.g. you must disclose samples of the types of messages you intend to send, and get explicit opt-in from recipients). Up until now, I've managed to avoid registering a campaign by instead paying a slightly higher per-message cost, but this is being phased out on July 5. I've been trying out https://jmp.chat (their founder is commenting elsewhere in this thread) and will likely port my number to them.
Hmmm ... I think the July 5 deadline is specifically for UK recipients ?
Regardless, your overall impression is correct: Twilio is no longer a hacker/hobbyist/enthusiast option as you cannot (by the letter of the law, at least) send SMS without registering your business entity:
This is very troublesome to me because I have built my own personal telco out of twilio functions and twiml bins, etc., and am heavily reliant on all manner of SMS workflows.
As of this writing (2023-05-27) everything - even SMS delivery to T-Mobile numbers - continues to "just work" but it sounds like I will just wake up one morning to have it all broken ...
> • Effective July 5, 2023, all 10DLC phone numbers used to send SMS and MMS messages to U.S. phone numbers must be fully registered to an approved campaign under your brand. Messages sent using unregistered phone numbers will be subject to a gradual increase of message blocking by Twilio, beginning on July 5, 2023, ultimately leading to a full block of all unregistered U.S.-bound messages sent after August 31, 2023.
