Use Cases: When Sent becomes a game-changer
Sent isn’t for every app—but once messaging grows beyond simple SMS notifications, the cracks start to show. At scale, you’ll hit problems that can’t be fixed by duct-taping another provider API. That’s where infrastructure-level solutions matter, and Sent is here to help.
Where Messaging Gets Hard
Messaging might seem like a simple problem at first, but it quickly becomes complex as you scale.
Deliverability Guarantees
Some messages simply cannot fail. If they don’t land, you break user trust or business operations:
Authentication & Security
- Login codes, 2FA, fraud alerts, password resets. If delivery fails, users are locked out or left vulnerable. These need speed, redundancy, and reliability that a single provider can’t guarantee.
Transactional Confirmations
- Order confirmations, payments, shipping updates, account changes. Users depend on them to know something important happened.
Critical Alerts
- Outages, security incidents, or time-sensitive events. Sometimes you need multiple channels at once to make sure users actually see them.
Multichannel Needs
As your user base diversifies, “just send SMS” stops working quickly:
Geography
- SMS dominates in the U.S., WhatsApp in Latin America, and that mix keeps shifting.
Demographics
- Younger users may lean on WhatsApp or iMessage. Older users expect SMS. Different devices and habits mean no single channel covers everyone.
Device Capabilities
- Some users have flip phones. Others expect interactive, media-rich messages. You need to adapt per device, not pick one lowest-common-denominator channel.
Scaling Up
High-volume messaging introduces headaches you can’t brute-force:
Cost Pressure
- At scale, every cent per message matters. Static routing wastes money—dynamic routing based on price and delivery performance saves it.
Reliability
- Depending on one provider is a single point of failure. Intelligent multi-provider failover is a must.
Compliance
- Opt-outs, regulations, content checks. At low volume you can hack this by hand; at high volume you need automation or you’ll burn through time and risk fines.
When Sent becomes a game-changer
What we here at 
Sent provide:
- Multi-channel delivery: One API, any channel—SMS, WhatsApp, future ones. No juggling providers.
- Deliverability guarantees: If a missed delivery is a business issue, you need fallback and redundancy.
- Global reach at scale: Regional optimization and compliance built in, instead of cobbling together country-by-country setups.
- Engineering focus: Keep your team focused on your product, not fighting messaging edge cases.
When You Don’t Need Sent
- Single-channel only: If SMS-only in one market is all you need, stick with a simple provider.
- Low message volume: At very low scale, optimization and redundancy won’t pay for themselves.
- Custom-built infra: If you’ve already sunk cost into your own stack and it’s working, don’t switch unless scale or reliability forces the issue.
- Special snowflake logic: If your app has routing rules too specific for a shared platform, you may need to roll your own.
Who Benefits Most
B2C SaaS
- Apps where messaging drives engagement, security, or operations.
Financial Services
- Banking, payments, and investment platforms where trust depends on reliable, compliant delivery.
E-commerce & Marketplaces
- Order/shipping notifications and customer service updates at scale.
Developer Platforms & ISVs
- Platforms embedding messaging into their own products without wanting to manage provider sprawl.
Emerging Segments
- AI-driven systems that generate huge volumes of context-sensitive messages.
- IoT and connected devices that need guaranteed delivery across varying endpoints.
- Logistics and supply chain platforms coordinating fast-moving operations.
Decision Factors When to Use Sent
Technical
- Message volume (especially bursts).
- Reliability requirements and failover capabilities.
- Engineering bandwidth vs. infrastructure maintenance.
Business
- UX impact of message quality and delivery.
- International growth plans and multi-channel reach.
- Whether messaging is a product differentiator or just table stakes.
Sent shines when messaging is core to your business, multi-channel, or at scale. If you’re still at SMS-only, single-market volume, you don’t need it yet. But once reliability, cost optimization, and multi-channel reach matter, infrastructure beats DIY every time.
The pattern is simple: build in-house when it’s small, move to infrastructure when it’s critical. Sent handles the heavy lifting so your team can ship product instead of re-inventing messaging plumbing.