Use cases

Appointment reminders by SMS

A short text the day before reminds patients, customers and clients of their appointment and gives them a way to reschedule in time. Schedule reminders from your booking software through the API, or upload a list and plan the send in the dashboard, without writing code.

CityDentalnow
Reminder: your appointment at City Dental is tomorrow, 3 Dec, at 10:00. Need to reschedule? Call 089 123456.

Sent at 9:00 the day before: who, when, and how to reschedule.

For practices, workshops and salons

Wherever a missed appointment leaves an empty slot, a reminder is worth sending:

  • Medical and dental practices, physiotherapy: the reminder the day before, and a second one for appointments booked weeks in advance.
  • Car workshops and tyre services: the service date, and a message when the car is ready for pickup.
  • Hair and beauty salons, studios, consultants: short slots booked online, where a forgotten appointment cannot be refilled.

An SMS reaches the client on any phone, without an app. Your business name as the sender makes it clear at a glance who is writing.

Scheduling with send_at

Add the send_at field to /api/sms/send or /api/sms/send-bulk and the message goes out at that time. Your booking system can schedule the reminder as soon as the appointment is booked:

  • Format ISO 8601 with a time zone (for example +01:00 or Z) or a Unix timestamp; at most 30 days ahead.
  • A time less than one minute from now is sent immediately.
  • The credit is deducted when the message is scheduled; the response carries a jobId whose status you can query.

For a whole day of appointments, one bulk request takes up to 500 recipients, each with its own text in the messages array.

When an appointment moves or is cancelled

Cancel the scheduled reminder with DELETE /api/sms/jobs/{jobId} and the price is refunded to your credit. Then schedule a new one for the new date. If sending has already started, the API answers 409 with not_cancellable.

Store the jobId with the appointment in your system, so that rescheduling becomes one call to cancel and one to schedule again.

Without code: list upload and scheduled campaign

No booking software with an interface? Export tomorrow’s appointments as CSV, upload the file in the dashboard, personalise the text with variables (name, time) and schedule the send. No programming, the same price per SMS.

A message sent under a name cannot be answered: the recipient’s phone has no number to reply to. Put a phone number or a short link for rescheduling into the text, as in the example above.

Scheduling a reminder

The request and the response from the documentation, with a German number and time zone:

POST /api/sms/send
{
  "to": "+4915112345678",
  "text": "Reminder: your appointment at City Dental is tomorrow, 3 Dec, at 10:00. Need to reschedule? Call 089 123456.",
  "from": "CityDental",
  "send_at": "2026-12-02T09:00:00+01:00"
}

→ 202 { "ok": true, "scheduled": true, "id": "cmv...", "jobId": "cmw...", "status": "scheduled",
  "sendAt": "2026-12-02T08:00:00.000Z", "price": 2.04,
  "statusUrl": "https://www.topsms.cz/api/sms/jobs/cmw..." }

Amounts in API responses are in CZK, the currency in which credit is held: 2.04 CZK corresponds to €0.084. A test key accepts send_at too, but returns 200 without a jobId and sends nothing.

Full API documentation →

Frequently asked questions

How far ahead can I schedule a reminder?

Up to 30 days. Give the time in ISO 8601 with a time zone, such as 2026-12-02T09:00:00+01:00, or as a Unix timestamp. A time less than one minute from now is sent immediately.

What happens if the appointment is cancelled?

Cancel the scheduled message with DELETE /api/sms/jobs/{jobId}. The price is refunded to your credit. Once sending has started, the job can no longer be cancelled and the API returns 409.

Can I send reminders without programming?

Yes. Export the appointments as CSV, upload the list in the dashboard, personalise the text with variables such as name and time, and schedule the campaign for the right moment.

Can patients reply to the reminder?

Not to a message sent under your business name; the phone has no number to reply to. Include a phone number or a link for rescheduling in the text instead.

What does a reminder cost?

€0.084 per SMS to Germany, Austria and the rest of the EU, with no monthly fee. A reminder of up to 160 GSM characters, umlauts included, is one SMS; longer texts are split and each part is charged.

Try it with 10 free SMS

Free account, active as soon as you confirm your mobile number. No credit card, no monthly fee, prepaid credit that never expires.

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