Use our new node for your conversational AI needs through SMS via your client's own Android phone

Built with n8n
,
1

Hey everyone,

My name is Raffy, and I am part of the engineering team over at Relayion. We just launched an integration for n8n, and we wanted to share it here because we genuinely hope it can be of help to developers who are building projects for themselves or for their customers whom they don’t want to impose using expensive aggregators.

We actually built this tool because we were looking for a seamless way to incorporate existing Android SMS capabilities into our own n8n workflows and into our own SaaS projects to come, using the actual mobile numbers our clients already have. We realized there are three massive benefits to doing it this way:

  1. Convenience: We don’t have to provision new lines or jump through hoops; we just use the hardware and number we already own, or our customers own.

  2. Established Trust: Because it uses the existing mobile number, our customers’ clients already recognize it and trust it right away.

  3. Inexpensive: It allows our customers to leverage their existing carrier plans without stacking on unnecessary costs, which keeps their business margins completely intact.

Even though SMS is a traditional messaging channel, it still carries some of the highest open rates out there. We wanted to tap into that for our own projects, but we also wanted to package it up to help the wider n8n community. We intentionally designed our free tier to be more than enough for personal projects or workflows targeting SMEs because we want to give developers real options to protect their clients’ budgets.

As a quick heads-up, apart from the community node, as of the latest n8n release, the Relayion node actually comes included right out of the box! You can find it natively in your n8n install, but you are also totally free to check the community nodes regularly for the latest versions too as we keep pushing updates.

If you want to see a quick 6-minute demo of it in action inside n8n, you can watch it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXdKsVH2HvU&t=2s

(Fair warning: you’ll have to bear with me on the video, I’m pretty bad at YouTubing myself lol, but hopefully it gives you a good look at how it works!)

To see how to get it all set up for yourself, you can check out our quick start guide and docs at (https://www.relayion.com)

Since we are just launching this, we are really looking to learn and make the tool better for everyone. We would welcome any and all sorts of feedback on the architecture, the node setup, or things we can improve on. Let us know what you think, and we’re happy to answer any questions right here in the thread!

3 „Gefällt mir“
2

Hey everyone, Raffy here from the Relayion engineering team. Noticed a few people viewing the post and wanted to share a quick example of how this actually fits into a workflow.

We usually use it for conversational AI setups or just piping n8n errors and server alerts straight to our phones. You just drop a standard HTTP Request node into your workflow and point it to the gateway endpoint with your API key. It saves a lot of time and effort for use cases that do not necessarily need to scale with the likes of Twilio.

Also since we just launched and we really want to get real-world feedback, we are giving lifetime access to our starter plan for the first 50 people who test it out. All we ask is that you register on the site, try it, and then drop us a quick line at hello@relayion.com so we can upgrade your account and hear what works or what breaks.

If anyone is trying to build a specific workflow or needs help formatting the webhook payload just let me know here. Happy to help you set it up.

3

The approach of routing SMS through the client’s existing Android number makes sense for small-scale chatbot deployments - it sidesteps the carrier registration overhead that kills most SMS automation projects for small businesses. A concrete use case I’d see fitting well: a local business bot where the owner already uses their personal number for customer contact, so there’s zero onboarding friction when switching to an AI-assisted response flow. Does the node handle incoming SMS (i.e. does the Android app push messages to an n8n webhook) or only outbound sending?

2 „Gefällt mir“
4

Hi Nguyen,

Thanks! And yes, it supports incoming SMS as well. Relayion’s back end will push incoming messages to n8n via webhooks, so there’s a corresponding node specifically for receiving SMS. I’ll share the workflow (https://cdn-dev.relayion.com/relayion_demo.json) we used in the demo video so you can see the whole flow in action.

You’re exactly right about the use case we had in mind. Relayion was built for small businesses that already rely on a single Android phone for customer communication. The idea is to let tools like n8n and AI automate things like inquiries, appointment scheduling, and notifications without changing the phone number they’re already using. That was the reason we built this.

We also intentionally didn’t build Relayion for bulk messaging. There are already platforms for that, and it’s not the problem we wanted to solve. We simply needed a reliable way to bridge SMS with our own n8n workflows. It can be used though for other things like appointment reminders, confirmations and alerts. But not for bulk spamming and what not.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out, please feel free to reach out to us if you have further questions!

Raffy