SMS tracker
Qué es SMS tracker?
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An SMS tracker is the tooling that follows a message's delivery status end-to-end — from the send API accepting it, through the carrier handoff, to a delivered, failed, or pending terminal state. It works by pairing the message ID returned at send time with the status callbacks (delivery receipts) carriers emit as the message moves, so a sender can answer for every message: where did it land, and if it failed, why?
More detail
Delivery tracking matters most for transactional traffic — one-time passcodes, order updates, appointment reminders — because 'the API returned 200' only means the platform queued the message, not that a handset received it. A tracker closes that loop via per-message status changes: queued, sent to the carrier, delivered, or undelivered with a carrier reason code.
Two patterns exist: polling the message record for its current status, and subscribing to status-change webhooks that push each transition to your endpoint in near-real time. Webhook-driven tracking is the standard choice because it fires only when a status changes, with no poll gaps.
Without a tracked status stream, support can only guess at the cause of a failed send — an invalid number, a blocked sender ID, a carrier filter — and reported delivery rates carry systematic blind spots.
On Orbit, SMS delivery tracking is built in: the send API returns a message ID, a delivery-receipt webhook fires on every status transition, and the same status stream powers the message-status view in the dashboard.
Preguntas frecuentes
- How is an SMS tracker different from SMS notifications?
- SMS notifications are the messages themselves — event-triggered texts a business sends when something happens. An SMS tracker is the delivery-status layer on top of any message: it follows each send from accepted to delivered or failed, regardless of whether the send is a notification, an OTP, or a marketing blast.
- Does delivery tracking tell me the recipient actually read the message?
- No. Tracking confirms the carrier's verdict — delivered to the handset, rejected, or still pending. A delivered status means the destination network accepted the message for the handset, not that a person opened or read it.
- Should I poll for status or use webhooks?
- Use webhooks for tracking. Polling stays available as a fallback, but a webhook subscription receives each status change as it happens, so the tracker reflects live status without a polling interval and without load spikes on heavy send volume.
See also
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