Integrations and Add-Ons

SMS Notifications

The SMS Notifications add-on sends automated text messages to parties and team members for case updates, hearing reminders, document requests, and settlement notifications. SMS is delivered via AWS SNS (primary) with optional Twilio fallback. The customer-facing charge is $0.04 per message segment. Usage is tracked per organization and reported to Stripe for metered billing. SMS Notifications is available on all plan tiers.

What you'll learn

What events trigger SMS notifications
How SMS pricing, segments, and billing work
How opt-out handling works
How to enable SMS for your organization

Events that trigger SMS notifications

SMS notifications are sent for the following events:

Case status updates (new assignment, status change)
Hearing reminders (sent before a scheduled hearing or video session)
Document requests (when a party is asked to upload a document)
Settlement notifications (when a settlement is ready for review or signature)

Pricing and billing

SMS is billed at $0.04 per message segment. A standard SMS is one segment; messages longer than 160 characters (GSM-7 encoding) or 70 characters (Unicode) are split into multiple segments. Multi-segment GSM-7 messages use 153 characters per segment; multi-segment Unicode messages use 67 characters per segment. Usage is tracked in Vilulia's SMS usage records and reported to Stripe at the end of each billing period for metered billing. You can monitor usage from Settings → Billing → Usage.

SMS provider

SMS is delivered via AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS) by default, with optional Twilio fallback if configured. The internal provider cost is approximately $0.00645 per segment for AWS SNS US numbers and $0.0079 per segment for Twilio US numbers. The customer-facing charge is $0.04 per segment regardless of provider.

Opt-out handling

Vilulia handles inbound STOP, START, and HELP messages automatically. When a recipient replies STOP, their phone number is flagged as opted out and all future SMS to that number are suppressed. Phone verifications for both party and user accounts associated with the number are also revoked. Replying START re-enables SMS delivery for that number. Opt-out records are stored by hashed phone number; the plaintext number is not stored in the opt-out table.

Phone number validation

Phone numbers must be submitted in E.164 format (e.g., +12025551234). Vilulia validates format and checks opt-out status before sending. Users verify their phone number before SMS notifications are activated for their account.

Enabling SMS Notifications

SMS Notifications is a usage-based add-on available on all plan tiers. To enable it, go to Settings → Features & Add-Ons and add SMS Notifications. Once enabled, configure which event types trigger SMS for internal team members at Settings → Notifications (each user can toggle SMS per event type after verifying their phone number). Configure default SMS triggers for external parties at Settings → Party Notifications.

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