How to migrate from LINK Mobility to Bird

LINK Mobility is a European CPaaS provider that sends SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, voice, and email over REST, SMPP, and SOAP APIs. Bird (formerly MessageBird) is a communications-infrastructure platform offering unified REST APIs for SMS, WhatsApp, voice, and email. On the messaging.dev Score, LINK Mobility rates 36/100 and Bird rates 76/100 — this guide covers what actually changes when you move.

What you gain and what you lose

Channels. Both carry SMS, WhatsApp, voice, and email. Moving to Bird you lose MMS, RCS, Viber, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram — LINK Mobility supports all five, Bird supports none. Neither offers Apple Messages for Business, and you gain no new channels in the move.

Compliance. Both hold GDPR and ISO 27001. Bird additionally holds SOC 2 and HIPAA, which LINK Mobility does not — so no certification is lost by switching.

Data residency. LINK Mobility runs EU servers only, with no region choice. Bird runs both EU and US servers and lets you choose residency; the API-key prefix (bk_eu1_ / bk_us1_) pins the region.

Onboarding and pricing. LINK Mobility uses volume-based, sales-negotiated pricing that isn’t published, and activation may require a call. Bird is self-service with published usage-based rates (SMS from $0.0073 to US numbers) and a free email tier of 1,000 messages/month — note there is no free SMS credit.

Tooling. LINK Mobility ships no official SDKs, has no sandbox, and its docs are rated medium. Bird ships TypeScript, Python, and Go SDKs, offers a sandbox, and its docs are rated high. One tradeoff: LINK Mobility exposes REST, SMPP, and SOAP, while Bird is REST plus SMTP only, so any SMPP or SOAP integration must be rebuilt on REST.

How the request format differs

LINK Mobility:

curl -X POST https://n-eu.linkmobility.io/sms/send \
  -u "USERNAME:PASSWORD" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "source": "LINK",
    "destination": "+4799999999",
    "userData": "Hello world",
    "platformId": "0",
    "platformPartnerId": "0",
    "useDeliveryReport": false
  }'

Bird:

curl -X POST "https://us1.platform.bird.com/v1/sms/messages" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer bk_us1_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+14155550100",
    "from": "Bird",
    "text": "Your Bird verification code is 481920. It expires in 10 minutes.",
    "category": "authentication"
  }'

Three things change:

• Endpoint. https://n-eu.linkmobility.io/sms/send becomes https://us1.platform.bird.com/v1/sms/messages. LINK Mobility assigns a regional host (n-eu/c-eu/s-eu); with Bird the region is encoded in the API-key prefix (us1/eu1) and the SDKs route automatically.
• Authentication. LINK Mobility uses HTTP Basic auth (-u USERNAME:PASSWORD, an Authorization: Basic header). Bird uses a region-prefixed API key as a Bearer token (Authorization: Bearer bk_us1_...).
• Payload. Rename the fields: destination → to, source → from, userData → text. Drop LINK Mobility’s platformId, platformPartnerId, and useDeliveryReport; Bird doesn’t use them and instead accepts an optional category (e.g. authentication) for message classification.

Migration checklist

1. Create a Bird account (self-service) and generate a region-prefixed API key; choose the EU or US host via the key prefix.
2. Map the payload fields: destination→to, source→from, userData→text; remove the platform fields and add category where relevant.
3. Re-point your sending code to the Bird base URL and swap Basic auth for the Bearer token.
4. Re-test in Bird’s sandbox before sending live traffic.
5. Rewire delivery callbacks: LINK Mobility’s useDeliveryReport flag becomes Bird’s delivery-status webhooks — update your callback endpoints accordingly.
6. Run both providers in parallel and compare delivery results.
7. Cut over once Bird’s numbers match, then decommission the LINK Mobility path.

For a deeper setup walkthrough, see how to start with Bird, and for the full side-by-side, see the Bird vs LINK Mobility comparison.

Watch out for

• Lost channels. MMS, RCS, Viber, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram are not available on Bird — if you use any of these on LINK Mobility, line up an alternative before cutover.
• No SMPP or SOAP. Bird exposes REST (plus SMTP for email) only, so existing SMPP binds or SOAP calls must be re-implemented as REST requests.
• Free credit is email-only. Bird’s free tier covers 1,000 emails/month; SMS is billed per message from the first send.