Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : Affordable SMS Service

[ThatScriptGuy]

For an ongoing project, a client wants to utilize text message reminders (Opt In, of course) in addition to email reminders that his website already sends out. I've researched the whole email to SMS area, but it's left a bad taste in my mouth. The general impression is that it's a flaky technology, often taking hours or even days for messages to reach their recipients. Couple that with the fact that I'm finding it difficult to find an up-to-date list of those email addresses, and this just isn't something I want to work with.
So, what I'm looking for are suggestions of a company or companies that provide a per month up to a certain limit of text messages. Ideally, they will have some sort of API that we can hook into to send these messages from a daily Cron. I've googled, but haven't yet found anything worth looking into.
If you've got experience in this area, please speak up.
Thanks,
Kevin

[activelobby4u]

clickatell.com is one good provider who has an API for sending sms directly from your website

[Matt - Kerplunc]

Ya i've heard some good things about Clickatell

[Panopta]

I agree with the others, Clickatell is good - we've used them for a while with no delivery problems. They're simple to integrate with, and they recently lowered their pricing for US delivery. BulkSMS isn't bad although they're currently lacking support for a couple of the major US carriers (Sprint and T-Mobile), which is a problem if you have a US based audience.

[ThatScriptGuy]

Thanks for your input guys. Clickatell looks good to me.

[e2000]

If you want to do it free, just find the cell provider that your clients will be using and send it as email.

[ObjectZone]

I built a project for a customer once using the API available from EZTexting.com. We actually built the notification system to utilize direct e-mail to phone first by selecting the provider and sending to the @tmomail.net or @vtext.com providers by default. This is free and works the vast majority of the time. If the user, however, determines they aren't getting their texts on time they can simply select "Other" and it then uses the SMS gateways at EZTexting.com and then the messages are usually delivered quickly.

Basically, there's no big reason to not benefit from the free services if they're working fine -- just provide the user a way to immediately ease the pain by switching to the for-pay service.

--Chris

[clientdixon]

Clickatell is really good. It does not have problem which is common in other. It is easy to integrate, no delivery problem. it is great to use. thanks.

[webhost18]

vfirst.com also offering such solution, may be you can get solution there..

[Nicodemus]

I was looking into this the other day. We've always used the public email-to-sms gateways. While they can sometimes be flaky, I've found them to be reliable at least 99% of the time. 90% of the time the messages are delivered within 10 seconds. 5% it can take minutes. 4% maybe hours and 1% not at all. My experience is mainly with Verizon and Sprint. For what you describe, which doesn't sound like it's mission critical, I think it would work well most of the time. Clickatell can get expensive pretty quick. Either way, I found a handy list of a lot of the providers, including all of the main US ones that I know of, and both the SMS and MMS email gateways they have. Search for "SMS Gateways" on wikipedia. (I can't post links yet, arg.) With that list it's pretty trivial to get the name of a person's carrier and their number, and be able to construct the resulting email.

<<signatures need to be set up in your profile>>

[Harzem]

I've been using Clickatell for quite some time now and they are fine. Messages delivered quickly, the API is very easy to use, and the global coverage is huge.

The only thing is that you can't specify the "sender" name, unless you prove your ownership of a company and they verify its name manually. This is done to prevent fraud, and I'm not complaining.

[evanatmtd]

I am actually developing a new SMS/MMS gateway service and looking for beta testers. PM me if you're interested.

Honestly though, to be truly unbiased, Clickatell really is one of the best. They're one of the few true aggregators that sells direct to consumers. Most other companies like eztexting.com and others are just reselling SMS on a shared or dedicated shortcode they're leasing, so you can guarantee you won't get the "best" pricing from one of the lower-tier resellers. However, if you're willing to help me beta test my service, I can definately beat Clickatell's pricing for you. My system has 100% US coverage and international to about 85 other countries. Again, PM me if you're interested. Otherwise, go with Clickatell or another true aggregator, not a reseller. Also, extexting.com's "standard delivery" messages are just using the carriers free SMTP gateways like a previous poster was describing. They just route it to the right carrier for you, and probably have more "whitelisted" smtp servers that don't get blocked as often. Their express delivery is just a regular outgoing message on their shared shortcode, and somewhat overpriced if you ask me.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other SMS questions. I have years of research in this area in building my own system.

[evanatmtd]

I didn't realize I needed 5 posts to use the PM system before I wrote my last message. Obviously I don't log into WHT much, haha. Well, I just need one more after this one, but please feel free to ask me any questions in this threat either about my system or SMS gateways / providers in general, and I'll be happy to help.

[trafficlight]

Textmarks may work for you, too. They have a very basic API but it works pretty well. I've only used the free service, but I like it so far.

[evanatmtd]

Textmarks is also pretty good. I have used their free service as well. They put their name and/or an ad on free messages, last I checked... And when I used it, they didn't have the paid service. Their prices don't look that great though, to be honest.