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Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App

#4

Post by markbao »

If you're looking to receive data through SMS, like Twitter does (through sending a SMS to 40404 to post to your account) you'll need a SMS short code.

For a selected shortcode they run about $1000 a month, while a random shortcode might run around $500 a month, in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code

Re: Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App

#7

Post by nasser »

chrisbolt wrote: post #3

You can use an SMS gateway like http://www.clickatell.com/

Our service (frucall.com) heavily relies on SMS, and I had very bad experience with ClickATell. While their web site looks pretty legit, their service is very unreliable (and by the way they never sent us the refund after we canceled with them).

It is important to notice that 2-Way SMS in the US has strict regulations - you have to use a short code, otherwise your service is considered illegal and the carriers can shut you down. ClickATel does not operate based on shortcodes, they use SMS modems which is basically a way to hook up a cellular line to a computer and intercept SMS messages.

There's quite a bit of details that one should be aware of if one wants to run a business grade SMS service in the US due to the way carriers control the SMS traffic. If there's interest from the readers I'll be more than glad to write down some of the details.

Re: Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App

#8

Post by pjackson »

Most carriers have integrated SMS-to-email. If you can bother your users to send their SMS messages to an email address instead of a shortcode or NPA-NXX style number, you'll be way better off in terms of integration and cost.

This only works if you know the carrier that your user uses, because presumably you have to route a reply back to them through an email-to-SMS gateway.

I don't personally know of any frameworks in PHP that will help you, but for Rails there are SMSFu and MMS2R, both of which are good at handling gateway SMS traffic.

You might peek at their code to see how they did it. Both are MIT Licensed.

Re: Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App

#9

Post by code_devil »

pjackson wrote: post #8

Most carriers have integrated SMS-to-email. If you can bother your users to send their SMS messages to an email address instead of a shortcode or NPA-NXX style number, you'll be way better off in terms of integration and cost. This only works if you know the carrier that your user uses, because presumably you have to route a reply back to them through an email-to-SMS gateway. I don't personally know of any frameworks…

Thanks ... I will definitely take a peek on it.

Re: Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App

#10

Post by code_devil »

nasser wrote: post #7
chrisbolt wrote: post #3

You can use an SMS gateway like http://www.clickatell.com/

Our service (frucall.com) heavily relies on SMS, and I had very bad experience with ClickATell. While their web site looks pretty legit, their service is very unreliable (and by the way they never sent us the refund after we canceled with them). It is important to notice that 2-Way SMS in the US has strict regulations - you have to use a short code, otherwise your service is considered illegal and the carriers can sh…

Yeah, I would love to know more about it.
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