Text-enabling “the good word”

The Bible App is exactly what you might think—an online Bible with lots of cool functionality built right in. Created by YouVersion for LifeChurch.tv, the Bible App lets users access the Holy Bible in 975 different versions and 675 languages. Because it’s free, users happily access all Bible App features without any advertisements or interruptions.

The Bible App was one of the first 200 apps available on iTunes back in 2008 and today it’s had more than 200 million installations.  The LifeChurch.tv team wanted users to be able to share the app with others in every way possible.

From its first release, the Bible App was shareable via email and on social media. But LifeChurch wanted users to be able to send pre-populated, customizable text messages to their friends and family, along with a link to download the app. The biggest challenge to making this technology possible was cost. As a non-profit, LifeChurch needed a partner that would make it easy to incorporate the new functionality via API, but could also scale economically to meet user demand (we’re talking millions of text messages!).

Working with Bandwidth, LifeChurch was able to easily tap into a nationwide portfolio of phone numbers and one of the easiest to use cloud communications API platforms on the market. Bandwidth made it simple for LifeChurch to secure phone numbers directly from the source—which turned out to be the best way to save money too.