SMS Gateway

nahdoic

Is there any reliable, stable, fast SMS gateway out there that doesn't require you to buy in builk?

I am more than happy to pay €50 for say 1,000 txt's, but I have no need to buy say 10,000 messages in bulk.

I just want to extend my own flexibility - so the txt's will only be coming and going to me.

Have you found any companies/sites good?

Graham

www.clickatell.com and www.deltica.com are 2 companies that immediately spring to ming.

I've used both and never had any problems.

The Corinthian

www.sms-wap.com is another that will also allow 8-bit SMS transmission, as well as custom UDH's.

Please note that none of these HTTP2SMS gateways are reliable in that the operators block them off as they become awear of them, from what I've observed.

nahdoic

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Please note that none of these HTTP2SMS gateways are reliable in that the operators block them off as they become awear of them, from what I've observed.

why do they do that? would these HTTP2SMS gateways not provide a considerable chunk of extra revenue for the operators.

if they cut them off - then it mustn't be profitable for them. but why isn't?

Graham

Can't say I've noticed any networks being blocked. Some of the UK networks have started to make termination charges for delivering messages to their subscribers but these don't apply to any of the Irish networks.

Deltica even offer 2 way SMS, so the terminating operator benefits from the revenue from reply traffic.

I've spent the last 12 months investigating the most reliable and cheapest sms providers, and found literally dozens of them, my suggestions would be:

Try them out first, preferably on all 3 Irish networks.
Check average delivery times (some can be very slow).
Keep a close eye on price (particularly if you need to deliver to UK networks as some SMS providers pass on termination/interconnect charges which can be 3 or 4 times the cost of a single txt message).
Watch out for resellers (there are lots of them, they all add a hefty margin).
Decide how you want to transmit the messages (e.g. email, http, API etc).
Dont necessarily start by looking at the few Irish companies operating an SMS service, the few I've found are between 3 and 5 times more expensive than other European operators).

The Corinthian

Originally posted by nahdoic
why do they do that? would these HTTP2SMS gateways not provide a considerable chunk of extra revenue for the operators.

Not to receive bulk SMS. They don't make anything out of that. Indeed, as all the operators sell bulk SMS packages, they're losing money.

Originally posted by Graham
Can't say I've noticed any networks being blocked. Some of the UK networks have started to make termination charges for delivering messages to their subscribers but these don't apply to any of the Irish networks.

They are on and off - the Swisscom gateway was blocked for a while last year. Same has happened on more than one occasion with MTN (the grandfather of cheap SMS) over the last three years. At the very least, the Irish operators are prioritising as low theses SMSC's, making them unworkable in some cases. Good point bringing up the internetworking fees, btw.

Watch out for resellers (there are lots of them, they all add a hefty margin).

Technically they're practically all resellers, in that almost none are operators, but simply buying off the operators in bulk. But some are reselling from resellers - and they are frankly a rip-off.