An inbound agent and an outbound agent need different plans

“The agent can send messages” is an incomplete requirement. The first message often determines which commercial and operational path is relevant.

Write down the first contact

An inbound assistant answers a customer who has already opened the thread. A proactive assistant starts a new conversation. Separate those jobs in the requirements, even if both eventually call a send endpoint.

Sendblue’s published agent plan is inbound-first. messages.dev documents contact-first access outside its sandbox. Those constraints shape the product before the model ever drafts a reply.

Choose the live line explicitly

A shared test number helps validate an adapter. It does not establish the dedicated identity, permissions and webhooks your production account will have.

Confirm which business line the application uses and show it in operational records. A team with several numbers should never let a worker choose one based on an ambiguous conversation title.

Describe the outbound policy

For a new conversation, retain the contact’s opt-in context and enforce the provider’s actual account limits. Published healthy-use recommendations and default software controls can be different numbers.

Miss Blue’s pricing gives a recommended starting rate for new conversations. Its workflow documentation describes separate new-contact controls. Neither is a universal Apple allowance.

Test the direction you will sell

Use an owned contact to test initiation, receipt, response and operator takeover on the paid plan. A sandbox demo proves a smaller thing.

The planner on this site helps list those decisions. It does not connect to a provider or establish that a selected plan authorizes your intended workflow.