When AT&T officially shut down its email-to-text and text-to-email service on June 17, 2025, a quiet but essential part of many organizations’ communication workflows disappeared overnight. Messages that used to be sent to addresses like [email protected] or [email protected] simply stopped delivering. For teams who relied on those alerts to reach the on-call clinician, engineer, technician, or service lead — this created an unexpected and urgent gap.
This wasn’t just a convenience feature going away.
For many hospitals, IT teams, MSPs, and operations groups, email-to-SMS was the way critical, time-sensitive alerts reached the right person. And when those alerts stop, people notice — often in the middle of a situation where delays matter.
So now the question becomes:
How do you replace email-to-text with something reliable — without rebuilding everything from scratch?
Why Email-to-Text Became So Common — and Why It Struggled Quietly in the Background
For years, email-to-text filled a very specific gap. It offered a quick way to get a message out without introducing new software, workflow steps, or training. A monitoring tool, an EHR, or a help desk system could send an email to a phone carrier’s gateway, and that email would show up on someone’s device as a text message. It was simple, inexpensive, and required almost no configuration. For many teams, it became part of the workflow long before anyone stopped to evaluate whether it was actually designed for critical communication.
But the simplicity came with trade-offs that were easy to overlook — until they caused problems. Delivery depended on carriers treating these alerts like ordinary text messages, which meant some messages arrived immediately while others were delayed or blocked entirely. There was no way to know whether the person on call actually saw the alert. If they missed it, the system didn’t try again or automatically notify someone else. And because email-to-text had no awareness of rotations or coverage schedules, it could only send the message — not ensure it reached the right person.
So while email-to-text made sending alerts easy, it didn’t make responding to them reliable. It worked just well enough to become invisible — until it stopped. And once it stopped, the limitations that were always there became impossible to ignore.
The Modern Replacement: OnPage
OnPage is a secure critical alerting and on-call communication platform that ensures urgent messages are delivered, seen, and acknowledged — with automatic escalation if needed.
It replaces email-to-text not by mimicking it, but by modernizing it:
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Alerts reach end users via secure app notifications that override silent mode. There’s an option to add SMS, email and phone call redundancy as well
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The on-call staff acknowledges the alert with one tap on the message
- The alert can either continue to ring until acknowkedged for 8 hours
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Alternatively, the system can be setup in a way where the alerts automatically escalate to the next oncall staff
- Alerts also bypass the silent switch and DND mode on phones
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Every action is logged, so there’s accountability and consistent response
You don’t have to redesign your workflows to get this reliability.
If you were already sending alerts by email →
You simply redirect those emails to OnPage.
How to Replace Email-to-Text with OnPage (And Keep Your Existing Workflow)
The transition to OnPage doesn’t require a system overhaul or a complicated messaging gateway. If your workflow already sends alerts by email — whether from an EHR, monitoring tool, ticketing platform, or automated script — you simply redirect those messages to OnPage using your OPID.
Every OnPage user and every OnPage team has a unique OnPage ID (OPID), which also functions as an email address. To deliver an alert to a specific on-call individual, you send the message to:
If your alerts should go to an entire team or group, the team has its own OPID, so you use that instead. No carrier gateway, no SMS dependency, no new transport system to learn. The email you were already sending simply lands in the OnPage app as a high-priority secure notification that can override silent mode and requires acknowledgment.
This makes the migration feel less like “adopting a new system” and more like “changing the email address alerts go to.” The workflow stays the same — the reliability improves dramatically.
Fine-Tuning Alert Behavior: Priority, Escalation, and Alert Tone
One of the hidden drawbacks of email-to-text was that every alert looked the same. A routine reminder and a critical outage had the same notification style — which not only made it easy to miss something urgent, but also contributed to alert fatigue over time.
OnPage is designed to avoid that. It recognizes that urgency has texture.
High-priority alerts are intended for time-sensitive or clinical-critical messages. These notifications cut through silent mode, repeat until they’re acknowledged, and provide the sender with real-time visibility that the alert has been received and accepted. For overnight or high-frequency rotations, OnPage also offers a Gentle High Priority mode — a unique tone profile that is still persistent and impossible to ignore, but less startling when it arrives at 2:43 AM.
Not everything requires the same level of urgency. Low-priority alerts are intended for informational updates, things like shift reminders, lab results becoming available, environmental monitoring notifications, or any message where awareness matters, but immediate action does not. These alerts still arrive clearly in the OnPage app, but without interrupting sleep, clinical rounding, focused work, or after-hours downtime.
If you’d like an alert to come through as a low-priority notification, you simply send the message to the corresponding low-priority OPID format (e.g., [email protected]). It will arrive as a gentle, non-intrusive notification — noticeable, but not disruptive. Users can also choose from a library of pre-configured alert tones or assign custom notification sounds, which makes it easy to create a sound profile that reflects the tone and urgency of each type of message.
Every user can choose their alert sound, and organizations can enforce consistent tones for specific alert types — which means responders can tell the nature of the message before they even look at their screen.
Why the OPID Approach Matters
In practical terms, switching from [email protected] to [email protected] eliminates the uncertainty that SMS gateways introduced:
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Messages are delivered through a secure, dedicated channel — not filtered or throttled.
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Delivery and acknowledgment are both visible to the sender.
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Escalation happens automatically if the alert isn’t accepted.
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The system always knows who is on call, so alerts go to the right person — not whoever happens to have the phone.
This is not just an alternative — it is the direct modern successor to email-to-text, designed for organizations where timing and accountability matter.
Why Organizations Are Moving Toward OnPage
Across healthcare, IT operations, manufacturing, and managed services, teams are arriving at the same realization: alerting has consequences. When a message signals responsibility — whether that’s responding to a patient need, triaging an outage, or addressing a safety issue — it has to reach the right person reliably. The end of email-to-text was the trigger, but the shift to OnPage is more about recognizing the importance of accountability and clarity in urgent communication.
Teams that once relied on pagers or SMS are finding that OnPage simply fits the reality of how people work today. Clinicians rotate across floors and service lines. Engineers support distributed infrastructure. Service teams move between locations or cover after-hours shifts. The work itself is mobile — so the communication needs to be equally mobile, but without losing the reliability and clarity that those roles require. OnPage gives organizations a dependable way to connect responsibility with action, no matter where the person is.
More Than a Replacement — A More Supportive Workflow
It’s easy to think of this moment as just replacing one delivery method with another, but the shift often runs deeper. When teams move away from email-to-text, they also tend to examine the experience of being on call: how often alerts arrive, how they’re prioritized, how they disrupt rest, and how consistently handoffs happen.
OnPage allows organizations not just to deliver alerts, but to deliver them in a way that respects both urgency and the people carrying the responsibility for it. High-priority alerts get through when they must. Standard and gentle alert modes help reduce the emotional jolt of being called into action. Automatic escalation prevents the quiet stress of wondering whether someone else responded. The system creates a communication environment where teams can remain responsive without being overwhelmed.
The result is more than restored workflow continuity — it’s a healthier, clearer, and more reliable on-call experience.
FAQ
1. What happened to AT&T’s email-to-text service?
AT&T discontinued its email-to-text and text-to-email gateway on June 17, 2025. This means messages sent to addresses like [email protected] or [email protected] no longer reach mobile devices. Any notification, alert, or automated message that depended on this pathway has effectively stopped delivering unless an alternative has been implemented.
2. Do I need to change my alerting systems to use OnPage instead?
No — you don’t need to redesign or rebuild your workflows. If your system already sends alerts by email, you simply redirect those messages to an OnPage OPID address (e.g., [email protected]). The alert will arrive as a secure, high-priority OnPage notification that requires acknowledgment. Your triggers, rules, and logic stay the same.
3. How does OnPage decide who receives the alert?
OnPage uses your on-call schedules and routing rules to make sure alerts reach the right person at the right time. If that person doesn’t respond, OnPage automatically escalates the alert to the next responder. This prevents missed notifications and eliminates uncertainty during handoffs or overnight shifts.
4. Can I control how loud or urgent the alerts sound?
Yes. OnPage supports multiple priority levels and sound profiles:
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High Priority alerts override silent mode and repeat until acknowledged.
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Gentle High Priority provides the same reliability but with a softer tone for overnight coverage.
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Standard Priority alerts are clear but non-disruptive for non-urgent updates.
Alerts can also be routed to [email protected] for intentionally low-impact notifications. Users can select from pre-configured sounds or custom tones to match urgency.
5. Is OnPage secure enough for healthcare and other regulated environments?
Yes. OnPage provides HIPAA-compliant, encrypted messaging with tracking, audit logs, and role-based access controls. It is widely used by hospitals, residency programs, physician groups, and care coordination teams to replace pagers and outdated messaging workflows while maintaining confidentiality and accountability.
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