Inbound Messages is a live inbox of texts your customers have sent you. New messages appear on their own without refreshing, and a notification is shown as each one arrives.

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How a message reaches your account

Review this before configuring keywords. It explains the one case in which a customer replies and no message appears. It depends on the kind of number they texted. If you have your own number, everything sent to it reaches you regardless of what the message says. Keywords are irrelevant. On a shared number, the keyword decides. Matching is forgiving about how the customer types it: capitals are ignored and a leading # is optional, so #SALE now and sale NOW both match a keyword of SALE.
On a shared number, a message with no recognised keyword reaches nobody. It produces no inbox entry, no auto-reply, no email copy and no webhook call. If a customer reports replying and the message cannot be located, check this first.
Set your keywords up on Keywords.

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Two ways to view the inbox

A switcher at the top of the message list changes how messages are grouped.
One entry per message, newest first. Use this for ordinary one-to-one conversations.

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Reading and replying

Selecting a message marks it as read and opens the conversation. You can also mark several as read at once. Type in the reply box and press Enter to send. Use Shift+Enter for a line break. Where a keyword sent an automatic reply, that reply appears in the conversation too, so you can see what the customer already received before you respond.

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Replying to a whole keyword group

In By Keyword view, a reply is sent to every unique sender in that group at once.
A group reply is charged per recipient, exactly like a bulk campaign. A group of 800 senders costs 800 messages. Check the group size before sending, because there is no review step and no confirmation.
A reply is an ordinary outbound message. It is charged and uses a sender ID exactly like Send SMS. Receiving messages is free; replying is not.You need an active sender ID to reply. If you have none, the reply is refused with a prompt to request one in Settings.

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Exporting

Downloads your inbox as a CSV file named for today’s date. You can narrow it by date range, sender and keyword first.

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Getting messages sent to your own systems

Two options, depending on what you need:

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Step by step, in detail

Not needed for everyday use. This is here for when a follow-up action has not happened and you want to know where in the process it sits. The key point: the message reaches your inbox first, and follow-up actions run afterwards and independently. So a missing auto-reply does not mean a missing message, and a message in your inbox does not prove your webhook was called.