What are the benefits of using an SMS gateway to send / receive text messages?

Question

I am using a Rails application and want to send / receive text messages through my application. The two solutions that I considered were using an SMS gateway and using a cell phone paired with Bluetooth with my Mac, and I have an ultraSMS program that sends SMS messages through the phone. The second option, of course, is much cheaper, because SMS gateways charge a fee for a dedicated number. The disadvantages of the second option, as far as I know, are 1. Reliability: the phone and the computer must be turned on and paired at any time 2. Scalability

Are there any other significant benefits for SMS gateways worth paying for? Are there other alternatives?

Thanks,

There

Answer 1

If your application is not so critical, you can use email for SMS. SO has some email questions for sms. You can search for them.

I would rather have an SMS gateway than using a personal mobile phone. You cannot send BULK sms using your mobile phone at the same time. Mobile phones send one SMS at a time, so its time is time consuming.

In India, SMS gateways are cheaper (for bulk purchases) than mobile phones. You can select the sender ID, which may contain alphabets and numbers. This is another advantage of mass SMS, as it will look more professional.

Sender ID object is not available when sending SMS using a mobile phone. A name can only be displayed if your receiver has your number stored.

Anoreter's advantage is reports. Typically, gateways have reports. You can create a custom report. Think about the options for a delivery report when sending sms via phone; -)

Answer 2

At least here in Norway, SMS gateways offer short (4-digit) numbers for incoming messages. Clients will start sending messages with a code word that will make the gateway forward the message to your application. You indicate that you need a dedicated number, in which case this point probably does not work.

SMS gateway providers can often provide payment services to easily pay by phone bill.

I think SMS gateways usually provide logging and statistics.

Answer 3

• International pricing certainly has something to consider sending messages abroad.

• Bandwidth. Third parties can skip thousands of messages per second. Your phone cannot.

• Definition

  . When you send an SMS message, its number is attached to the message. Third parties may disguise the number as short.

• Support for bulk commercial text messaging. If you use a regular tariff agreement, you may find that it is clearly contrary to the terms of the contract to send your messages. If this is the case and they find out, they are more than their right to leave you high-grade.

Answer 4

Of course you have to go for SMS Gateway solution. It will be proven as the best ROI model in the long run.

Secondly, you do not need to buy a dedicated incoming number with a gateway, you can just rent a KEYWORD on the gateway number. All your customers will send their SMS requests to a dedicated gateway number, and all messages, starting with your hired keyword, will be redirected / redirected to your URL of the web application that receives incoming messages.

Gateways also provide services such as auto answer, which gives you 0 outgoing message costs. The page that receives the incoming message from the gateway processes the incoming message using business rules and will respond with a text response within 160 characters, which will then be received by the gateway and sent back to the requesting client’s mobile phone number. This is basically a shortcode model.

Thanks.

Answer 5

At present, integrating a cell phone with your software seems like a very strange solution. So, I will describe the advantages of using the API to send sms with examples of our API :

It is easier . As easy as registering and sending an HTTP request:

curl -X "POST" https://api.wavecell.com/sms/v1/amazing_hq/single \ -u amazing:1234512345 \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d $'{ "source": "AmazingDev", "destination": "[phone]", "text": "Hello, World!" }' 

Here is a complete and very detailed tutorial .

It is more reliable and stable. Achieving a stable service is difficult. If you need high uptime, you need to develop a distributed system with monitoring and a high-end team. If you need a high speed of delivery (do not lose your messages), you need to constantly measure the performance of mobile operators and SMS aggregators.

It is scalable . You can earn millions of SMS per day with the same stable quality that is not achieved with home solutions for cell phones.

He is global . If you send, for example, from a phone number in Canada to a number in Singapore, your operator will pay for this message with its roaming tariffs that do not match its local ones. Usually they are much more expensive than global gateways that can be offered for the same delivery. You can check our prices and compare.

Additional features . As @Shoban pointed out, these are: SenderIds and delivery reports. You may also need a rich dashboard with analytics and monitoring. You can choose one of the available protocols (HTTP, SMPP). In addition, we have massive sms, sms scheduling, mobile validation API, ...