Group Membership

Add or remove a contact from a group. Membership is the bridge between a contact and your messaging — a contact must have an active membership in at least one group before any messaging endpoint will accept them as a recipient.

Endpoints

The URL encodes the relationship: phoneNumber identifies the contact (E.164), groupId identifies the group (grp_* prefix from a Groups response).

POST — Add a contact to a group

Adds the contact to the group. The optInMode in the body chooses the enrollment flow:

curl -X POST \
  https://platform.textingline.com/api/v1/contacts/by-phone/+18005551234/groups/grp_DsAdb4EBYBh3z25sBA1q \
  -u "your_key_id:your_key_secret" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "optInMode": "CONFIRM"
  }'

Request body

The body may be omitted entirely; the default optInMode: "DIRECT" is used.

Opt-in modes

📘

Silent means silent to the contact, not to your integration — a SILENT enrollment still fires the contacts.group.opted_in webhook like any other opt-in.

Response

Returns 200 OK with the full contact projection after the change. Inspect groups[] and pendingGroups[] to verify the resulting state.

Idempotency

If the contact is already an active member of the group, the call is a no-op for all modes and returns the current contact state (still 200). The same applies if a CONFIRM-mode enrollment is in flight — re-issuing the POST does not send a second opt-in SMS.

One SILENT-specific behavior: if the contact has a pending confirmation for this group (an unanswered CONFIRM), a SILENT call quietly completes the membership — they become an active member without receiving any message.

Consent gate (cannot be overridden)

Two states block enrollment regardless of optInMode:

Both return 409 Conflict with the error code in the body. See Error Codes for the full details.

DELETE — Remove a contact from a group

Removes the contact from the group. Always a soft removal — records MANUAL_REMOVAL / USER_REMOVED on the membership log; the contact and the group both stay intact.

curl -X DELETE \
  https://platform.textingline.com/api/v1/contacts/by-phone/+18005551234/groups/grp_DsAdb4EBYBh3z25sBA1q \
  -u "your_key_id:your_key_secret"

Cannot record a HARD opt-out

DELETE removes the membership but cannot mark the contact as HARD-opted-out. Only the contact themselves can do that (by texting STOP, replying STOP to a message, etc.). If you need to flag a contact as opted out, instruct them to text STOP to your sender number — see Compliance.

Idempotency

If the contact is not a member of the group (whether they never were, or they were already removed), the call is a no-op and returns the current contact state (still 200).

Response

Returns 200 OK with the full contact projection after the change.

Understanding groups[] vs pendingGroups[]

The contact response surfaces both arrays so you can see the full enrollment state at a glance:

{
  "id": "con_BoZHt0bxx5Qg2qN0",
  "phoneNumber": "+18005551234",
  "groups": [
    {
      "id": "grp_DsAdb4EBYBh3z25sBA1q",
      "name": "VIP Customers",
      "optInAt": "2026-04-01T00:00:00.000Z",
      "tags": [...]
    }
  ],
  "pendingGroups": [
    {
      "id": "grp_PqRsT5uVwXyZaB6c7DeF",
      "name": "Spring Promo",
      "pendingSince": "2026-04-15T14:30:00.000Z"
    }
  ]
}

• groups[] — fully opted-in memberships. The contact can be sent messages addressed to these groups.
• pendingGroups[] — CONFIRM-mode enrollments awaiting reply. The platform has sent the opt-in SMS; until the contact replies YES, they don't receive messages targeted to the group.

A pending membership transitions to active when the contact replies YES. To detect the transition, subscribe to the contacts.group.opted_in webhook — it fires when a contact becomes an active member of a group, including when a double opt-in is confirmed (see Webhooks). If you'd rather not run a webhook endpoint, you can instead poll GET /contacts/by-phone/{phoneNumber} and watch for the group ID to move from pendingGroups[] to groups[]. The matching contacts.group.opted_out event fires when a contact leaves a group (including a STOP reply, which sends one event per group they were in).

Rate limit

These writes share a single contactApiWrite bucket with Contacts POST and PATCH. A burst of contact updates and membership changes counts against one pool. See Rate Limits.

Common errors

See Error Codes for the full reference.