Forward SMS to email, Telegram, Slack, Teams and more from your own Android number
Every text your Android phone receives can land somewhere more useful than the phone: an inbox, a chat, a spreadsheet, another number or your own API. textbee uploads each incoming SMS and sends a signed webhook; a short relay you run checks the signature and forwards the text. Each page below has the relay, tested against a mock of its destination, the setup on that side, and the limits that apply there.
Updated
- Forward SMS to email automatically from your own Android numberEvery text your phone receives, delivered to an inbox: a small relay verifies the textbee webhook and sends each SMS as an email over SMTP, with Gmail app password setup and sending limits.Updated September 23, 2026
- Forward SMS to Telegram with a bot: every text your phone receives, in a chatSend each SMS your Android phone receives to a Telegram chat or group through your own bot: BotFather token, chat ID, a verified relay, and the Bot API limits.Updated September 23, 2026
- Forward SMS to a Slack channel with an incoming webhookPost every text your Android phone receives into a Slack channel: create an incoming webhook, run a verified relay, escape the text so it cannot ping the channel, and stay inside Slack rate limits.Updated September 23, 2026
- Forward SMS to a Discord channel with a webhookSend every text your Android phone receives into a Discord channel: create a channel webhook, run a verified relay with mentions turned off, and handle the 2,000 character message limit.Updated September 23, 2026
- Forward SMS to Microsoft Teams with a Workflows webhookPost every text your Android phone receives into a Teams channel through a Workflows webhook, the replacement for the Office 365 connectors that stopped working in May 2026. Adaptive Card relay included.Updated September 23, 2026
- Log received SMS to Google Sheets automaticallyAppend every text your Android phone receives to a Google Sheet: an Apps Script web app writes the row, a verified relay posts to it, and every cell stays plain text, safe from formula injection.Updated September 23, 2026
- Forward SMS to another number automaticallyForward every text your Android phone receives to another phone number: a verified relay sends each message on with the textbee send API, with a loop guard and the plan allowance explained.Updated September 23, 2026
- Forward SMS to a REST API with your own auth and field namesSend every text your Android phone receives to your own REST API: when to point the textbee webhook straight at it, and a relay that adds a bearer token, your field names and an idempotency key.Updated September 23, 2026
How every relay works
- The phone receives a text and the textbee app uploads it to your account.
- textbee posts a MESSAGE_RECEIVED webhook to the relay, signed with HMAC-SHA256 in the X-Signature header.
- The relay verifies the signature, drops a delivery it has already handled, and forwards the sender and the text.
- If the destination is down, the relay answers 502 and textbee delivers the same event again later. Errors a retry cannot fix are logged instead.
textbee delivers the webhook once the phone has uploaded the text, so a phone that was offline delivers its backlog when it reconnects. Texts received more than 48 hours before the upload are stored but not sent to webhooks. A 5xx answer or a timeout is retried, up to 10 attempts in all with growing gaps, and a subscription that keeps failing is paused. Received messages count toward the plan allowance the same as sent ones.
No server to run a relay?
A workflow tool that accepts webhooks can take its place. The n8n guide shows a Webhook trigger fed by textbee. Without a public address at all, poll GET /gateway/messages with direction=received and a cursor on a schedule, and forward what comes back.
Why WhatsApp is not on the list
The WhatsApp Cloud API lets a business send free text only within 24 hours of the person last messaging or calling it. Outside that window it accepts pre-approved template messages only, so it cannot pass on arbitrary texts as they arrive.
Sources
- developers.facebook.com, checked on September 23, 2026