SMS text messaging

Kapow is always very quick, they claim on the site ([www.kapow.co.uk) that the average delivery time is 4.8 seconds, and in my experience it seems to be true, or even quicker as we receive the messages instantly.
One of our clients is a Taxi firm who uses the service to send jobs to drivers... so it's very time critical.

 

What about at peak times. What is the slowest delivery time for a message to be sent? And also would you be able to handle 500 messages being sent at once?

 

Why don't you ring Kapow, they are nice folk, they;ll have all your q's answered in no time.

 

I'm currently using www.clickatell.com and they are great. You can send by SMTP or HTTP post, they have a nice API documentation.

If you signup you have 10 sms's for free to test with.

Best Regards

 

Whoever is reading this thread should draw up a table and compare all of the features/prices offered by different providers and base their decision on that (i.e. carefully) and select 2 or 3 in order of preference.

When our company was small-time, providing a simple bulk sms application, we used www.mxtelecom.com (who are very good, but expensive). We were then offered a better price (almost 40% less) for the same service from another company (which i don't want to publicly shame). At the testing stage, everything was okay - but just before we were about to switch from MX to the new company, the new company made some changes on their side that rendered our whole application useless. This was about the 4th or 5th booboo they made on their side and so we gave up with them and it took us about 8 weeks to get refunded for the £550+ purchase we made, but thankfully we got it. Unfortunately, we had reduced our prices with the new supplier in mind and had to work at a loss for those 8 weeks.

Since then, we have moved much further up the ladder and provide our gateway service around the needs of our customers, bearing in mind that we ourselves used to be in the same boots as they are now. We allow the originator of First Class messages to be customised at no extra cost, we do not have any minimum purchase sizes, our small purchase-size prices (e.g. UK 5p) are the same as other's bulk prices and we provide added-value in significant quantities. In brief, we have based our success on the success of our customers, not on their failure.

So, to summarise, draw up the table comparing everything that is being offered and prices. Then invest a little amount of money to test their services in real condition, and have a second provider in your mind as a back-up in case the first one fails.

Ooh! One more thing - when we were establishing an SMPP connection with one provider, they decided to suddenly throw in a minimum monthly spend of £700. That was done just before a serious broadcast had to take place for a London univeristy and i think they did it because they felt we would comply out of desperation to ensure everything went well for the university. So make sure that you do not get committed to any monthly throughput or minimum monthly spend because, whilst your idea might sound great, it may take time to pick-up and you'll be working at a loss that might send you out of business before it happens.

Good luck with all of your applications.

Fahed Bizzari
www.tm4b.com

 

i have only good experience with clickatel so far.

 

Clickatell is good, but expensive. There is quite the number of small players on the market who play fair and square, you just need to spend some time searching

I'm using www.justsms.net, and frankly I'm quite satisfied...

 

I have a sms sending script you may be interested in. Take a look.

PM me with questions.

http://phpmysms.com

thanks!

 

I'm a developer and my company owns our own SMS API. We charge a flat monthly fee.. not per message and is completely customizable

 

I know this is an old thread but I thought I would throw some comments into it.

One provider to use to send SMS messages would be obviously - Google Voice. With GV now being open to the public and free, of course it's a good decision
to consider right? Well, yes and no.

Yes because it's free, you can send and receive text messages all you want.
No because Google Voice has created some trickery in how they do things.

First of all, you can't have more than one Google Voice account opened in the 'same' browser at once. They don't allow it because
session carries across the browser. So the only way around that is by using multiple browsers for multiple accounts.

Well, most of us only have 3 browser on their computers. Firefox, Chrome, IE (as horrible as it is)
Of course if you're a MAC user - that's different - but you get the point.

And another thing about Google Voice is that Google has an API for "EVERYTHING" EXCEPT Google Voice!
Is this by design? I most certainly think so. So it limits the 'normal' user, and forces them to use services
like the ones that have been posted in this thread.

Now - I'm all for being in America, the land of the free and home of opportunity. But the bottom line is this.
What you are truly paying for is knowledge - not the service. You are paying for the companies/person's knowledge
on how to bring the service to you not so much the scripting.

And while I am going to offer something here as well that isn't any different from them, it is however a little better
suited for people's needs.

So how do you get around the Google Voice thing? Because after all - it would be key to use Google Voice
because their sms sending and receiving are absolutely free! How do you get past the ability to be able to
be logged into more than one account at a time? How do you get past the fact that you can automate the messages
that are being sent out, while using Google Voice and multiple accounts?

Well, knowledge is power - and profitable.

Let me explain. Other developers said it couldn't be done. Other developers said there was no way around it.
Other developers said that it was impossible. My take is this: I imagined it - so I could create it.
And that is what I set out to do.

Let me introduce ITxtAds.com
http://www.itxtads.com

ITxtAds.com is a script that was compiled to allow you to use Google Voice.
I created my 'own' API to connect to Google Voice. I created it in such a way
that you can actually use MULTIPLE accounts. AND I created it in such a way
that you can be logged into multiple accounts at once - yep - at once!

Here check out some of the features of this:

Check out the list of things this can do:
Multiple Google Voice Accounts
Add multiple keywords to the system to search for
Add multiple cities. (Just type the city name – no url is needed!)
Get ads into your control panel based on your keywords
Ability to search those ads in your control panel
Automatically get your messages of people interested in selling delivered quickly to you
Change your keywords at anytime you’d like
Change your cities anytime you’d like
Set your default message to be sent to outbound text messages
View your archived messages at anytime
Send text messages right from your control panel (Not Google Voice)
Ability to adjust ad phone numbers and automatically send out a text
Ability to see the 5 latest text messages next to an ad

Now, you can take multiple google voice accounts, merge them into one control panel
and send and receive messages at anytime. That alone is priceless, when merged with
a service that is free!

But I took it a step further. I then creating ITxtAds.com so that it merges with Craig's List Ads!
The idea at the time was to make it so that if you bought or sold on Craig's List, you could literally
have buyers or sellers chasing you instead of you chasing them!

By setting your default message, selecting the keywords you were looking for, and then adding your
cities you wanted to target, you could literally have people texting you back in minutes - all coming
back into your control panel! Pretty cool huh?

Here's a good video to watch - and keep in mind one thing, the video is outdated already. The site
has more features than what's in the video.

http://www.itxtads.com/video

Now the end result is this. Yes, ITxtAds.com is a script that you can purchase and install on your
own server running a linux setup using php and a mysql database. But you aren't paying for the 'service'
you are paying for the 'knowledge'. So the bottom line is this - don't throw your money away on 'services'
when you are truly just paying for knowledge.

With that said - I know that ITxtAds.com is geared towards Google Voice and Craig's List merging the two
together, but I can take the same technology that I created and strip out the Craig's List side of this and
integrate anything else into it.

Why - because I imagined I could - there for I did.

Any questions or comments can be asked here and I hope that you too learn that knowledge is power.