Businesses get communications through many channels. It can be handy to have a searchable archive of messages in one place. Forwarding SMS messages to email lets you keep both kinds of messages in one spot. Plivo makes it easy to forward SMS messages to email using the most popular web development languages. Here we walk through the process with Node.js.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. To receive incoming messages, you must have a Plivo phone number that supports SMS; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console or by using the Numbers API. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Node.js development environment.

The code example below presumes you have a Gmail account, but it’s easy to edit the code to support another SMTP client.

Create the forward SMS application

Create a file called smsemail.js and paste into it this code.

var express = require('express');
var nodemailer = require("nodemailer");
var app = express();

app.use(express.urlencoded({extended: true}));
app.set('port', (process.env.PORT || 5000));
app.all('/email_sms/', function(request, response) {
    // Sender's phone number
    var from_number = request.body.From || request.query.From;
    // Receiver's phone number - Plivo number
    var to_number = request.body.To || request.query.To;
    // The text which was received
    var text = request.body.Text || request.query.Text;
    // Print the message
    console.log('Message received from: ' + from_number + ': ' + text);

    var transporter = nodemailer.createTransport({
        service: 'gmail',
        auth: {
            user: "<email_address>",
            pass: "<password>"
        }
    });
    
    var mailOptions = {
        from: "<from_email_address>", // sender address
        to: "<recipient_email_address>", // comma-separated list of receivers
        subject: "SMS from ", from_number, // Subject line
        text: text // plaintext body
    };
    
    transporter.sendMail(mailOptions, function(error, info) {
        if (error) {
            console.log(error);
        } else {
            console.log('Email sent: ' + info.response);
        }
    });
});

app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
    console.log('Node app is running on port', app.get('port'));
});

Note: If you use Gmail to send email, you must use an app password, which will be treated as your password to send email from the application.

Save the file and run it.

$ node smsemail.js

You should see your basic server application in action at http://localhost:3000/email_sms/.

Set up ngrok to expose your local server to the internet.

Create a Plivo application

Associate the controller you created with Plivo by creating a Plivo application. Visit Messaging > Applications and click Add New Application. You can also use Plivo’s Application API.

Give your application a name — we called ours Email SMS. Enter the server URL you want to use (for example https://<yourdomain>.com/email_sms/) in the Message URL field and set the method to POST. Click Create Application to save your application.

Create Application

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Navigate to the Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this application.

From the Application Type drop-down, select XML Application.

From the Plivo Application drop-down, select Email SMS (the name we gave the application).

Click Update Number to save.

Assign Application

Test

Send a text message to the Plivo number you associated with the application using a regular mobile phone. The incoming message should be forwarded to the email address you specified.