Android SIM Gateway
Turn an Android phone into an SMS sending gateway using your own SIM card, no SMS API provider required.
The Android SIM Gateway turns a phone you already own into a working SMS sending channel — Mersal routes outbound SMS through the phone's own SIM card instead of an external SMS API provider.
How it works
A companion Android app (the Mersal bridge app) runs on the phone and pairs it with your Mersal account. Once paired, that phone's SIM card (or cards, if it's a dual-SIM device) becomes a selectable sending method inside Mersal, right alongside any SMS API providers you have connected.
This is a genuinely practical option, not just a fallback — a lot of businesses use it specifically because it sends from a real local phone number without ever contracting an SMS API provider.
What you can use it for
- Single sends — pick the Android gateway as the sending method for an individual SMS, the same as you would any other gateway.
- Campaigns — send an SMS campaign to a whole contact group through the paired phone's SIM.
- A fallback or secondary channel — run it alongside an SMS API provider, so you have a second sending path if the provider has an outage, hits a rate limit, or simply costs more than you want for lower-volume sending.
Why businesses use it
Contracting an SMS API provider means provider accounts, per-message costs, and sometimes sender-ID approval processes. The Android SIM Gateway skips all of that: if you already have a phone and a SIM with an active number, pairing it gives you a working SMS channel with no external provider relationship required. It won't match a provider's throughput or delivery guarantees at real scale, but for many small and mid-sized senders it's a legitimate primary channel, not just a stopgap.
Rate limits and safe sending
Like every SMS gateway in Mersal, the Android SIM Gateway has configurable rate-limit presets — per-minute, per-hour, and per-day caps that control how fast messages actually go out.
Keep these conservative on a SIM gateway specifically. Sending too fast from a real SIM card looks like unusual activity to a carrier and can get the number flagged, which is a real risk this channel has that a dedicated API provider generally doesn't.
Setting it up
- Install the Mersal bridge app on the Android phone you want to use as a gateway.
- Pair the app with your Mersal account.
- In your dashboard's Gateways screen, the paired phone appears as a selectable SMS sending method.
- Set conservative rate limits before sending any real volume through it.
See SMS for how this fits alongside API-based sending, and Gateways Overview for how gateways are managed across all channels.