Pony Express HQ Is Now a Public Zapier App

Here is the thing nobody tells you about SMS platforms: the texting is the easy part. The hard part is everything around it. Getting the new resident from the sign-up form into the right group. Making sure the board sees the reply that came in at 9pm. Keeping the roster spreadsheet and the contact list from drifting apart over eighteen months.

Most platforms answer that with "we have an API." Which is true, and useless, if nobody on your board writes code.

So we built a Zapier integration instead. As of this week Pony Express HQ is public in the Zapier app directory. No invite code, no waitlist. Search for Pony Express HQ in Zapier and connect it.

What you can wire up

Four things in Pony Express HQ can start an automation:

• New Incoming Message. Someone texts you back.

• New Contact. A contact is added to your organization.

• New Subscriber. Someone opts in, usually by texting your keyword.

• New Opt-Out. Someone texts STOP.

And five things can happen in Pony Express HQ as a result of something else:

• Send SMS to a phone number.

• Send Broadcast to Group, which is a full campaign to everyone in a group.

• Add Contact to Group. Creates the contact if it does not exist yet.

• Remove Contact From Group.

• Opt-Out a Contact.

Mix those with the 7,000+ apps already on Zapier and you get the things people actually ask us for.

Three that we would set up first

Your roster spreadsheet feeds your groups. New row in Google Sheets, contact added to the group. Stop doing the quarterly CSV import.

Replies land in Slack. New incoming message, posted to a channel. The whole board sees the text without anyone sharing a login.

Your calendar sends the reminder. Google Calendar event starts, broadcast goes out to the group. Board meeting Tuesday, text goes out Monday, and you never touched it.

The honest caveats

A broadcast triggered by a Zap costs the same credits as a broadcast you send by hand. Automation does not make texting free, it just means you stop forgetting to do it.

Consent still applies. If a Zap is adding people to a group from a form, that form needs SMS consent language on it. A Zap is not a legal shortcut, and we will not pretend otherwise.

And the integration is in Zapier's Beta phase for the next 90 days. That is Zapier's standard runway for a newly public app, not a warning about reliability. It is running against the same production API the dashboard uses.

How to turn it on

You need an API key. In Pony Express HQ go to Settings, then API Keys, create one, and copy it. Then in Zapier, add Pony Express HQ as a connection and paste the key in. That is the whole setup.

Step-by-step walkthrough: How to Connect Pony Express HQ to Zapier.

Or go straight to the listing: Pony Express HQ on Zapier.