SMS Gateway: The Channel Your Customers Are Already Expecting

SMS gets opened at rates email can’t touch. Globally, average open rates sit around 98%, with most messages read within three minutes.¹ In Australia specifically, SMS sees roughly 7.5 times the engagement of email for consumer messaging.² The question for your customers is not whether SMS works. It’s why they’re not using it yet. 

SMS Gateway is the answer, and it’s already available inside SASBOSS.

What is SMS Gateway? 

SMS Gateway is Access4’s direct SMS product, built into the SASBOSS platform. It gives users the ability to send and receive SMS themselves, without a third-party provider, a separate invoice, or a new vendor relationship to manage. 

It covers the full range of business SMS use cases: 

• Transactional messages: appointment reminders, booking confirmations, order updates, payment receipts 
• Two-factor authentication: MFA codes sent directly, no standalone SMS provider required 
• Marketing campaigns: promotional broadcasts, seasonal offers, loyalty communications 
• Customer service: two-way messaging for inbound queries and outbound responses 
• Alerts and notifications: payment reminders, service updates, escalation alerts

It all runs through SASBOSS. Your customers get one bill, one support contact, one platform: the same one they already use for voice and UC. 

Who does it benefit? 

SMS Gateway works across verticals, but use case density is highest in a handful of industries. 

Healthcare Missed appointments cost practices real money every month. When the Australian Red Cross Blood Service moved appointment reminders and follow-ups to SMS, no-shows dropped 38%.³ For practices running high booking volumes, that adds up fast. 

Retail and hospitality SMS coupons and promotions redeem at roughly 10 times the rate of email equivalents.⁴ Domino’s Australia saw the same pattern in practice: an SMS loyalty campaign to lapsed customers lifted repeat orders 28% in 30 days, outperforming email 4 to 1.⁵ For businesses running loyalty programmes or time-sensitive offers, SMS is the channel that moves stock and fills tables. 

Finance and professional services Afterpay moved payment reminders and fraud alerts from email to SMS and saw customer satisfaction scores rise 15%, driven by speed and reliability.⁶ For businesses chasing outstanding invoices or prompting action on time-sensitive matters, the read rate alone justifies the channel. 

Any business that takes bookings, sends reminders, or needs to reach customers urgently. That’s the short version of who benefits. 

How it works inside SASBOSS

SMS Gateway is provisioned the same way as any other Access4 service, directly inside SASBOSS. No integration project, no new contract, no additional vendor. 

Access4’s Included Value Plans give you a straightforward commercial model:

Additional SMS beyond the included allowance is billed at the plan’s per-message rate.  

Add SMS to an existing customer account in a single provisioning step. It lands on the same invoice as their voice and UC services. No new billing relationship, no new support queue. 

Why compliance is now part of the conversation 

Australian SMS inboxes are saturated with scams. The ACCC reported over $2.74 billion lost to fraud in 2023, with SMS-based impersonation a growing share. Consumers are ignoring unfamiliar numbers and carriers are starting to filter them. 

In response, the ACMA SMS Sender ID Register, introduced in July 2026, raised the compliance bar for businesses sending SMS in Australia.⁷  Businesses sending SMS in Australia must register their Sender ID or risk messages being blocked, filtered, or flagged as spam. For your customers, registration also means their business name, not an unknown number, appears at the top of every message. Better deliverability and stronger brand recognition in one step. 

Businesses using unregistered or consumer-grade SMS tools face real consequences: carrier filtering, ACMA enforcement risk, and customers who simply delete anything that looks suspicious. 

Access4’s SMS Gateway is built for compliance. Sender ID registration, opt-out management, and two-way messaging are included by design, not bolted on.

The bottom line

Your customers’ customers are already being texted, by their accountant, their gym, their dentist, their takeaway order. All arriving on a device your customers not yet using to reach them. 

SMS Gateway gives your customers a direct, compliant channel to their customers, managed from the platform they already run their voice and UC through. 

It’s already in SASBOSS. Provisioning takes minutes. 

Explore SMS Gateway. Talk to your Partner Growth Manager. Or book a demo.