API reference / People writes

Send a direct message

Written and maintained by The ProspectAPIs team

POST/v1/messages

POST /v1/messages is the ProspectAPIs operation sendMessage, in the People writes group of the REST API. Send a direct message from your connected account. $0.03 per action, with or without an attachment, and for a message to a person outside your network (inmail: true with a subject, which also spends one of the account's credits; 409 no_inmail_credits when none is left, nothing sent). An attachment or an inmail send answers 503 temporarily_unavailable, with nothing charged, until it is switched on. Acts on your own connected account (connect one first with POST /v1/accounts/session). Billed per call once the write product is live; while it is not yet on sale the call is free (GET /pricing reports people_writes.available). Cost: $0.03 per action. Send your API key as a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

The quickstart shows this call in context, next to the first requests most integrations make.

Parameters

Request body

JSON.

{
  "person_ref": "person ref",
  "text": "text"
}

Responses

Every error answers with the same JSON body, an error string and sometimes a code; the errors page lists each status and when it happens. A per-key 429 carries Retry-After; see rate limits.

200 response fields

Done. Our neutral confirmation. The body is a PeopleWriteResult.

Code samples

Each sample sends the same request. Set PROSPECTAPIS_KEY in your environment first. Values come from the spec's examples; replace them with your own.

curl -X POST https://api.prospectapis.com/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PROSPECTAPIS_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "person_ref": "person ref", "text": "text" }'

const res = await fetch("https://api.prospectapis.com/v1/messages", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.PROSPECTAPIS_KEY}`, "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "person_ref": "person ref",
    "text": "text"
  }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`${res.status}: ${(await res.json().catch(() => ({}))).error ?? res.statusText}`);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

import os, requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://api.prospectapis.com/v1/messages",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['PROSPECTAPIS_KEY']}"},
    json={
        "person_ref": "person ref",
        "text": "text",
    },
    timeout=30,
)
res.raise_for_status()
data = res.json()
print(data)

Billing

Billing reserves before it serves: the call holds what it may cost, serves at most what that hold covers, and refunds the rest when the response closes. Any non-2xx answer refunds the whole hold, so a failed call costs nothing. The response reports your balance in X-Credits-Remaining.

Related

Previous operation: List conversations (live). Next operation: Remaining message credits. Every operation, grouped by area, is on the API reference index.

Create a free account to get a key, then run the samples above with your own values (this call acts for real, so use real inputs).