![]() I had to implement user-initated sms functionality on our website recently and found the service helpful. Stay away from them, and find an aggregator that understands your needs as an application developer. I've found that the aggregators that use the phrase "your campaign" rather than "your application" are the worst offenders. The biggest thing I've found to watch out for with SMS aggregators is that many of them are really set up to be marketing companies, not application hosts-they don't really understand using SMS as a channel through which users can interact with service providers. If you require low latency, high reliability, and no advertising, you'll pretty much have to go through an SMS aggregator unless you're big enough to negotiate with each carrier individually. The catch here is that they reserve 20 characters in each message for short advertisements to pay for their services. ![]() ![]() TextMarks lets you pick a keyword for your service that allows users to route messages to you through TextMarks' shared short code, 41411. If you're trying to set your site up to send and receive SMS messages on a budget, you can use a service such as TextMarks. If you need to be able to reliably deliver SMS messages to the same people a year or two from now, this method will begin to fail. The second is that especially in this modern era of portable phone numbers, users will switch carriers from time to time, and will almost certainly forget to tell you.Don't use this method if minimizing latency is important to you. Probably because they aren't getting paid by the sender for these. The first is that the cellular carriers all prioritize SMS messages sent through their email gateways below other SMS traffic.There are two very important limitations that I've discovered with that approach, however: It's also easy, on absolutely any development platform, to send email once you have the user's info. It's easy to ask your users to type in their phone number and select their carrier from a list. The simplest way is definitely using the email hack that Paolo Bergantino mentioned above. others offer it from the start, but the prices are extortionate. Most providers do offer a post-pay option, but only when you've successfully completed a few transactions with them. Most providers you will have to pay in bulk, if you want decent rates from them, but they'll often negotiate with you for 'smaller-than-usual' batches. In regard to cost, you're looking at prices ranging from a few pence/cents for most Western countries (prices are a little bit higher for most third-world countries, though, so beware). You simply have to look around for a provider that suits your needs. Many other providers that I've used in the past, have very similar interfaces, and all are really competitive when it comes to pricing. $smsResult = $smsEngine->ClientAPI($smsRequest) These guys have excellent rates, cover a huge proportion of the globe, and have excellent customer service.īelow is some code extracted (and some parts obfuscated) from one of my live web applications, for sending a simple message via their API: require_once("") My favourite provider, and indeed, the one that has happily negotiated with me for lower rates in the past, is TM4B ( ). ![]() In my experience (which is extensive with SMS messaging web applications), you will often find that negotiating with different providers is the best way to get the best deal for your application.ĭifferent providers often offer different services, and different features. Your main option for sending SMS messages is using an existing SMS provider. ![]()
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