Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : how to send SMS from my server?

[toby27]

hi guys,

I saw some sites allow their users to send sms to US phone.

I wonder if I can do the same for my Australian and Southeast Asia's users? I mean, do i have to contact any mobile operator in the local country or i can simply use php ?

Cheers,
toby

[misterd]

http://www.google.com/search?q=sms+gateway

Have fun!

[activelobby4u]

I have used this provider one year back .

http://www.clickatell.com/

I beleive they had given us a trial period too ..They also have an application which can be used to send sample sms. May be you should give it a try

[under_gravity]

clickatell is a south african company which recently moved to US. Prices are not the cheapest but service quality is good.

[activelobby4u]

yeah under_gravity is right about the support quality. Each ticket opened with them was responded in a timely and professional manner .

But i would strongly suggest getting a trial from any service provider you select as, some may not provide the sms service to certain parts of the world and some may have service confined only to certain parts of the world.

[mkc]

Some providers offer an email-to-sms gateway for their numbers on their network. Otherwise, like others have said clickatell has been fast and reliable for us.

[Pingdom]

Clickatell is one of the SMS providers we use as well, and they have indeed provided good support.

[toby27]

thanks guys, is there any way I can become clickatell myself? , What i mean is whether i can install software or hardware to my server to allow send out sms? That's because i would like to know which way is the least cost as well as can teach my team about the sms structure.

[Pingdom]

Originally Posted by toby27

thanks guys, is there any way I can become clickatell myself? , What i mean is whether i can install software or hardware to my server to allow send out sms? That's because i would like to know which way is the least cost as well as can teach my team about the sms structure.

That may be easier said that than done. If you only intend to focus on a specific country or region it will be a lot easier than if you go for global coverage. But I'm sure there are people here who know a lot more about this and can give you a more thorough answer.

[phonedev]

If for US, you can always send using the email address. For eg: for sprint users, you can add @messaging.sprintpcs.com to the number and SMS will be pushed. Thats a reasonable alternate to send SMS. We have used this in the past with some success.

[CodeSpanker]

I was wondering to create a SMS service only for my country through our servers (creating an app), can this be done without paying to mobile services?

Regards,

[KnownHost-Jonathan]

Most mobile services have an email address that you can send an email to and it will text the phone of that email address

if that just made any sense.

[Steven]

What I have done in the past is used Kannel + a GSM modem.

[Vinayak_Sharma]

To start SMS service of your own you will need to commit a huge volume with the operator to get them cheap.

Its better if you start with some existing provider then plan your expansion as per the volume you are handling.

[StevenG]

You could just plug a mobile phone into the server (serial, USB) and use something like gnokii or gammu.

You can send/receive texts, the incoming can use smsd to pop the texts into a mysql database (or postgres)

The outgoing texts can also be put into mysql for queueing.

I've just done this with nagios - the incoming texts I'm using to acknowledge nagios alerts. Very useful