SMS and Email Notification System
With 3.5 billion smartphone users globally (Statista, 2020) and 306.4 billion emails sent daily (Radicati Group, 2020), SMS and email notifications are indispensable for businesses to engage customers effectively. In this article, we discuss how to implement an SMS and email notification system using Twilio and SendGrid with IronWorker to improve your customer communication, and ultimately drive business growth.
Table of Contents
- Frequently Asked Questions About SMS and Email Notification Systems
- Prerequisites
- Setting up IronWorker
- SMS Notifications with Twilio
- Deploy Your SMS Worker
- Email Notifications with SendGrid
- Deploy Your Email Worker
- Queuing Your IronWorker Task
- Conclusion
- Bonus Tip
1. Frequently Asked Questions About SMS and Email Notification Systems
Q1: What is Twilio?
A: Twilio is a cloud communications platform that enables developers to send and receive SMS messages programmatically.
Q2: What is SendGrid?
A: SendGrid is a cloud-based email delivery service that simplifies the process of sending transactional and marketing emails.
Q3: Are there alternatives to Twilio and SendGrid?
A: Yes, alternatives include Nexmo for SMS and Mailgun for email. Choose based on your requirements, such as pricing, features, and reliability.
Q4: What is IronWorker, and how can it help with SMS and email notifications?
A: IronWorker is a serverless computing platform that allows you to offload tasks, such as sending SMS and email notifications, to the cloud.
Q5: Is IronWorker cost-effective for sending notifications?
A: IronWorker is cost-effective by offloading tasks to the cloud, reducing infrastructure costs, and improving delivery efficiency.
2. Prerequisites
Before implementing the SMS and email notification systems, make sure you have the following:
- An Iron.io account (sign up here)
- The IronWorker CLI installed (https://dev.iron.io/worker/reference/cli/)
- A Twilio account for sending SMS (https://www.twilio.com/)
- A SendGrid account for sending emails (https://sendgrid.com/)
3. Setting up IronWorker
First, you need to create a new IronWorker project. Sign in to your Iron.io account, navigate to the "Projects" tab, and click "Create New Project".
Authenticate with your Iron.io account by specifying two environment variables: IRON_PROJECT_ID and IRON_TOKEN
Next, you'll need to set up your environment variables. Go to your project settings and add the following environment variables:
- TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID: Your Twilio Account SID
- TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN: Your Twilio Auth Token
- TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER: Your Twilio phone number
- SENDGRID_API_KEY: Your SendGrid API key
4. SMS Notifications with Twilio
Next, we will create a worker that sends SMS notifications using Twilio. Let’s use a sample Python script for reference. Create the sms_worker.py file with the following content:
from twilio.rest import Client
import os
account_sid = os.environ['TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID']
auth_token = os.environ['TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN']
twilio_phone_number = os.environ['TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER']
client = Client(account_sid, auth_token)
message = client.messages.create(
body="Hello from IronWorker!",
from_=twilio_phone_number,
to="+1234567890"
)
print("SMS has been sent! SMS_ID: "+message.sid)
In the above code replace the “to” parameter’s value with the real phone number.
Related Reading: Processing Twilio on Heroku with Iron Worker
5. Deploy Your SMS Worker
Now you'll need to add your worker script with dependencies to a docker image and register with IronWorker:
- Create a Dockerfile
FROM python:3.8-slim
RUN pip install twilio
COPY sms_worker.py /app/sms_worker.py
CMD ["python", "/app/sms_worker.py"]
- Build your Docker image and push it to Dockerhub
docker build -t USERNAME/sms_worker .
docker push USERNAME/sms_worker
- Register the docker image with IronWorker. You should pass your real Twilio credentials in this command:
iron register -name sms_worker -e TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=XXX -e TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=YYY -e TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER=ZZZ USERNAME/sms_worker
Now you are ready to queue your SMS worker (see step 8).
6. Email Notifications with SendGrid
Create a worker that sends email notifications using Sendgrid. Let’s use a sample Python script for reference. Create the *email*_worker.py file with the following content:
import os
from sendgrid import SendGridAPIClient
from sendgrid.helpers.mail import Mail
api_key = os.environ['SENDGRID_API_KEY']
client = SendGridAPIClient(api_key)
message = Mail(
from_email="noreply@example.com",
to_emails="user@example.com",
subject="Hello from IronWorker!",
plain_text_content="This is a test email sent using IronWorker and SendGrid."
)
response = client.send(message)
print(f'Delivery status: {response.status_code}')
In the above code replace the “from_email” and ”to_emails” with the real values.
7. Deploy Your Email Worker
Now you'll need to add your worker script with dependencies to a docker image and register with IronWorker:
- Create a Dockerfile
FROM python:3.8-slim RUN pip install sendgrid COPY email_worker.py /app/email_worker.py CMD ["python", "/app/sms_worker.py"] - Build your Docker image and push it to Dockerhub:
docker build -t USERNAME/email_worker . docker push USERNAME/email_worker - Register the docker image with IronWorker. You should pass your real Sendgrid API Key in this command:
iron register -name email_worker -e SENDGRID_API_KEY=XXX USERNAME/email_worker
8. Queuing Your IronWorker Task
Once your worker is deployed, you can schedule it to run using the IronWorker CLI or the Iron.io dashboard. For example, to run your sms_worker immediately:
iron worker queue sms_worker
Or, to run your email_worker at a specific interval (e.g., every hour):
iron worker schedule --run-every 3600 email_worker
9. Conclusion
In this blog article, we've demonstrated how to set up IronWorker to create an SMS and email notification system using Twilio and SendGrid.
By leveraging the power of IronWorker's serverless computing platform, you can easily scale your notification system to handle large volumes of messages without having to worry about infrastructure management. With IronWorker, you can focus on building and improving your application while it takes care of the heavy lifting.
10. Bonus Tip
To further enhance your IronWorker-powered SMS and email notification system, consider the following bonus tip:
Error Handling and Retries: Implement robust error handling in your worker scripts to handle scenarios where API calls to Twilio or SendGrid may fail due to network issues or rate limits. You can also configure IronWorker to automatically retry failed tasks using the -retries and -retries-delay options. For more details run iron register -help
