How to Get Datto RMM SMS Alerts (5-Minute Setup)

How to Get Datto RMM SMS Alerts (5-Minute Setup)

· by Sam Greenspan

There’s really nothing worse than a client calling you to let you know their server’s down. You’re the MSP. You’re the one who’s supposed to know first (or fix it so fast they don’t know at all).

Datto RMM monitors everything. And it alerts you.

Via email.

And as you’re probably experiencing — which is how you found me here — RMM email is a firehose. You’ve grown kinda numb to it.

So you went into the settings looking for the SMS option, and found there isn’t one. Instead, you’re supposed to route things to a heavy incident management platform or build your own system.

You just want a text to buzz.

Here’s the much, much lighter way to do that, with no engineering work required.

Datto RMM Text Alerts: Table of Contents

The Quickest Way to Get SMS Alerts on Your Datto RMM Monitors, Step-by-Step

Note: Everything below is based on the modern Datto RMM interface, not the old one that was finally retired in early 2026.

Step 1: Set up your email-to-SMS alerting

Our method here is using a reliable, easy email-to-SMS service (one that doesn’t require you to set up your own regulatory paperwork or add a new complex system to monitor).

text.email is the best option because it does all of that — and can also turn an email into a text to just you or to your entire team. (Or to whoever is on call at the time.)

You can sign up in about 30 seconds at text.email. You’ll get a special email-to-text address (or set up a distribution list to get an address for your team).

Step 2: Add that address to your monitor’s email response

Hey, good news on the sending side: you really don’t have anything to configure. Datto RMM sends alert email from its own cloud, so you don’t need to add your own SMTP server or relay. It sends emails right out of the box.

You will, however, need to individually choose which monitors text you. Which is probably better than a global setting anyway, since the big reason we’re here is RMM alerting fatigue.

Open a monitor (Policies > Monitoring > your policy > the monitor, or a standalone one on a device), find the Response (Optional) section, and switch on Send an email.

Under Recipients, add your text.email address and set its format to Text (not HTML).

(Both Datto RMM and text.email have formatting options so you can frontload your texts with the most important info.)

Step 3: Put the useful part in the subject line

A text shows the subject first, so front-load it.

Datto RMM lets you write a custom subject with variables, so [hostname] | [sitename] | [alert] hands you the device, the client, and the problem in the first line of the message before you’ve tapped it.

Why Not Get Alerts from Datto RMM in Other Ways?

I just gave you the easiest path to getting text alerts from your RMM, but it’s not the only way. Here are some of the other options you have for text alerts (or other alert mediums more urgent than email).

The old cell phone carrier email-to-text gateways

If you’re having vague recollections right now of Verizon and T-Mobile and all the other carriers offering email-to-text as part of your cell phone plan… that’s true. Or, at least, it was.

The cell phone carriers spent the last few years fairly quietly shutting those gateways down, so an email to your-number@vtext.com or the rest will likely disappear, silently.

If you set up alerts using your carrier’s email-to-text address years ago, there’s a real chance a monitor is texting a dead address right now.

text.email is the modern version of those gateways.

A full-featured alerting platform like OpsGenie and AlertOps

Datto’s docs actually point you to OpsGenie and suggest that for your urgent messages.

But… uh… that’s also on the way out. Atlassian stopped selling it and they’ll stop supporting it in April 2027.

AlertOps is still alive — if you need something that involved.

It’s a full incident-management platform with on-call schedules, escalation policies, acknowledge-and-resolve, an alert that climbs the rotation until someone owns it. If you want all that, then yes, this is the path.

But it’s a heavy (and pricey) tool for “text me when a server dies.”

A webhook wired to Twilio

The tempting move is to skip all of it: send Datto’s alert webhook to a small function of your own and have it fire a text through Twilio or a similar API.

But caution: This isn’t as easy as it looks or sounds.

You’ll need to register for something called A2P 10DLC (those are the regulations that the cell carriers actually blamed for killing their email-to-text). And, of course, this webhook-to-Twilio connection becomes a new system you have to maintain — and make sure it doesn’t go down.

Get Your Datto RMM Alerts Going in the Next Five Minutes

You can turn the alert emails Datto already sends into texts without integrating software, filling out regulatory paperwork, or creating any new systems.

You paste in an email address, and you’re done.

Sign up at text.email, grab your address, and drop it into the “Send an email” spot on your most urgent monitors.

(Want to test this out? You don’t even need to sign up. Just drop in yournumber@text.email right now and send a test.)

Which Of Your Many, Many Alerts Warrant a Text?

So… I’m guessing that as an MSP, you’re getting tons and tons of alerting emails. That kinda comes with the territory.

And if you get texts for all of them, you’ll quickly start ignoring SMS messages the way you’ve learned to ignore emails.

I know the split below probably isn’t going to be exactly right for you, but hopefully it’s a good jumping off point.

Text:

  • A production server or key device offline (Online Status)
  • Ransomware detected
  • A backup failure on a protected device (Datto Continuity)
  • A critical service stopped and not restarting
  • A production disk about to fill

Create a ticket:

  • Patch failures
  • Antivirus out of date or not running
  • A non-production device offline
  • CPU or memory pinned, unless it’s dragging a production box down with it

Can stay as just email:

  • Flapping services and devices that recover on their own
  • Expected reboots and maintenance-window noise
  • Informational monitors you only read during a review

Datto RMM Text Alerts: What Comes Next?

Alright. Time to get set up.

It’s a quick process: sign up at text.email. Maybe create a distribution list for your team. Use that email to SMS address for the monitors that can’t wait. And start getting your alert texts today.

And because Datto sends the mail from its own cloud and text.email handles all the texting infrastructure and regulatory headaches, there’s nothing to keep running on your end. This is really a case where you can set it up once and trust it to keep on working behind the scenes.

Try text.email free

Send an email to
your-number@text.email
and receive it as a text in seconds. No signup required.