Twilio - Conversations
Twilio - Conversations
Twilio Conversations unifies multi-channel (SMS/MMS/WhatsApp/Chat/Email) messaging into a single "conversation" primitive with multi-participant, persistence, and read receipts.
One Conversation spans channels — customer sends SMS, agent replies via WhatsApp, all in the same thread
Email channel has special constraints (SendGrid only, separate setup)
POST /Conversations to create, POST /Conversations/{Sid}/Participants to add (specify channel address), POST /Conversations/{Sid}/Messages to send.
Uptime · 30-day window
About this API
Conversations is Twilio's next-generation messaging API (2020+), the evolution of Chat v1. Its key insight is channel abstraction — a Conversation isn't tied to one channel; participants can join from SMS, WhatsApp, or a browser chat SDK, and everyone sees the same message thread. This excels at customer service: a customer asks via WhatsApp, an agent replies in an internal chat tool, full history preserved. It also supports rich webhook hooks for LLM auto-reply, routing, and compliance auditing. For new projects after 2020, Conversations is the default; Chat v1 is no longer recommended.
What you can build
- 1Customer-service agents handle one thread across SMS+WhatsApp simultaneously
- 2Group chats with participants on multiple channels
- 3Persisted message history and search
- 4Migrate legacy Chat v1 apps
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- One Conversation spans channels — customer sends SMS, agent replies via WhatsApp, all in the same thread
- Native webhook hooks for bots/routing
- Persisted message history with search
Limitations
- Email channel has special constraints (SendGrid only, separate setup)
- Group capacity caps at 100 participants
Example request
curl https://support.twilio.com/<endpoint>Getting started
POST /Conversations to create, POST /Conversations/{Sid}/Participants to add (specify channel address), POST /Conversations/{Sid}/Messages to send.
FAQ
Can the same phone number appear in multiple Conversations?+
Yes. Participants are indexed by (conversation_id, channel_address) — the same number lives independently across different conversations.
How does Conversations integrate with Studio Flow?+
Use the Conversations widget in Studio to route inbound messages into a Flow. Flow can write replies back to the original Conversation.
How long is message history retained?+
Indefinitely by default. You can set TTL at the Service level (separate TTLs for messages and conversations).
Technical details
- Auth type
- unknown
- Pricing
- unknown
- Protocols
- REST, WebSocket
- SDKs
- python, javascript, java, ruby, php, csharp, go
- Response time
- 166 ms
- Last health check
- 5/12/2026, 7:38:32 AM
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