Best Strategy to send Text Messages from NT

[springguy]

I have a NT Web Server app that determines when a communications should take place with a person or group of people.  The system knows whether the specific person to receive the communications wants to receive it via email or via snail mail, and the system generates the needed response (ie print a letter or send an email).

Now, we are getting requests to expand those options to include sending a text message to the individual's cell phone.  We know who wants that option and what their cell phone number is.  But that is all we know about it - we don't know their cell service provider, for example.

So, the question is what is the best (easiest to implement, lowest cost, etc) approach with a NT web server to be able to send a text message to a cell phone given all we know is the phone number.

Thanks,
Mike Springer

[kevin plummer]

If you google it there are lots of providers and different plans where you send them an email and they send the txt based on the email. So very easy to implement and no problems sending to various networks - but it does cost money...

[DonRidley]

Springguy,

If you can find out and store their carrier info, than it's real easy to send texts.

I attached a list of cell phone carriers and their text "emails."

Don

[attachment deleted by admin]

[springguy]

Thanks guys, very helpful.
Mike

[cwtart]

I just finished integrating software based texting into my app - both desktop app and Nettalk web server. There are a lot of SMS APIs out there - I settled on EzTexting. It is trivial using NetTalk to send and receive texts with knowing just the cell number. The SMS API company is a middle man - their servers receive the text from you and route it to the proper sms gateway - they charge anywhere from $0.01 cents to $0.08 cents per message. Return messages are stored on their server until you download them or have them automatically sent to a URL of your choosing.

I also did the hardware route earlier - GMA and CDMA modems - software based texting is far easier.

Hope this helps a bit.

Chuck

[Devan]

We've set up two NetTalk sites now using a local web SMS provider - www.smsbroadband.com.au

Of course, these guys are catered towards Australian users - we can send SMS messages to any Aussie mobile for about 5 cents.

They have a web api, and using NetTalk together with XFiles, I think it only took about an hour to set up the first site to send SMS's.  Second site took only a few minutes because we ported the same back end code across.  I was really surprised at how easy it was to do.

[springguy]

Chuck,
EzTexting looks very promising.  Were there any tricks you had to implement in your NetTalk code?  It looks like you would just be acting like a SOAP client sending messages to their server.  Is that the way you approached it?
Mike

[cwtart]

Mike,

Just a NetTalk web client doing some simple post or gets - the format is REST so no soap header - about as simple a post or get as possible. To receive text replies I created a service (Self Service) that gets any messages from the EzTexting inbox every 60 seconds. If any messages are received, I parse them into an email and send the email to a predetermined address. So the delay between a received text and the recipient getting the email with the text of the message is slightly over 60 seconds.

If you are running this from a web site you don't even need a separate service - just indicate in your EzTexting account what URL you want received texts sent to and then handle the parsing in your NetTalk web server code.

Chuck

[springguy]

Chuck,
Super - Thanks,
Mike