Concepts

Reference definitions for every term used elsewhere in these docs. If a page uses a word you're unsure about, it's defined here exactly once rather than re-explained everywhere.

Account: A Connecfy login. Owns zero or more SIMs, API keys, and a subscription to a billing plan. All messages, whether sent from the dashboard, the API, or received on a SIM, belong to exactly one account.
SIM: The customer-facing name for what the system models internally as a Device: a physical SIM card connected to an account, identified by a permanent id. A SIM has a name (renameable via an alias), a phone number, and a live online/offline status. See SIM Cards.
Gateway: Connecfy's connection to a SIM — the thing that actually polls for work, sends, and reports incoming texts. In casual usage "SIM" and "gateway" mean the same connected resource; "gateway" emphasizes the connection, "SIM" the resource it exposes.
Platform pool: SIMs owned and operated by Connecfy rather than a customer. An account with no SIMs of its own has its sends routed here automatically, so integration can start before connecting one.
API key: A per-integration bearer credential your server uses to call the Connecfy API. Generated from the dashboard, shown once in full, stored by Connecfy only as a hash. See API Keys.
Message: One SMS, in either direction. Every message has a direction (outbound or inbound), a status, the counterpart phone number, the body text, and timestamps for each state it's passed through.
Direction: outbound — sent by your account through a SIM. inbound — received on a SIM and reported back. They share one message model and one conversation view, but an inbound message can never be claimed by the outbound send queue, and outbound sending is unaffected by whether receiving is turned on.
Status: Where a message is in its lifecycle: queued, sending, sent, delivered, or failed for outbound; received for inbound. Full state diagram in Message Lifecycle.
Plan / quota: Every account is on a billing plan that caps SMS sent per calendar month and the number of SIMs that can be active at once. Sending past the SMS cap, or pairing past the SIM cap, is rejected with a clear error rather than silently failing — see Errors.