8 ms·

Telephony, SMS, and MMS APIs

122 points by Glibaudio 10y ago

kumarski 10y ago
I see you reposted my post from an internal hackathon hackers post.
duvander 10y ago
The data appears to be culled from ProgrammableWeb.
- kumarski 10y ago
  correct. I had my outsourcer do it. not sure if they scraped it or used LinkKlipper.
  - Jommi 10y ago
    Really fascinated of this kind of semi--outsourced work procedure. Outsource the manual data entry to somewhere else for a minimum cost and then focus on your core strengths alone.
    - kumarski 10y ago
      I outsource everything I suck at. So that tends to be a lot of stuff.
gremlinsinc 10y ago
Would be nice if it included pricing per # and per SMS msg sent, etc...and any other fees.
- kumarski 10y ago
  none of these companies will list their prices publicly... twilio will b/c they're probably slightly over priced. Always negotiate lower prices and shop around.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    Plivo, Nexmo & Bandwidth all list their (much lower) pricing.
- brightsize 10y ago
  Here are the pricing pages for two services that I looked into as possible alternatives to Twilio: https://www.plivo.com/pricing/ https://www.plivo.com/pricing/ https://www.nexmo.com/products/sms/ https://www.nexmo.com/products/sms/
  - mediaserf 10y ago
    I use both of these services and Flowroute https://www.flowroute.com/pricing/pricing-sms/- https://www.flowroute.com/pricing/pricing-sms/- Flowroute's pricing is really competitive. Nexmo has great analytics that show failures. Plivo will just fail and not log it and not return a failure, so I'm migrating away from them.
saarons 10y ago
I wish I had something like this sooner. I decided to go with Plivo for a side-project of mine and while my experience has been pleasant I really miss MMS support. I'm going to take some time going through this list evaluating different MMS providers. Anybody have any experience with a particular company on this list with MMS that they enjoy?
- robbiep 10y ago
  MMS Providers seem to be few and far between. Looking for an Australian offering at the moment - having some trouble. Any advice welcomed.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Twilio is an obvious mention. More expensive than Pilvo (I never heard of them and only need SMS for a project of mine so thanks) but I've never had an issue. Twilio also supports carrier lookups, you might be able to leverage that and send emails to '@mms.att.net' and the like.
- quentusrex 10y ago
  I'm actively looking for MMS support, US as well as international.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Twilio does MMS, both inbound and outbound. Pictures only for the US and Canada, though.
dipublio 10y ago
It would be good to know which of them support international numbers, or how many country it covers
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Seconded. (I am targeting Asia and Africa.)
pbreit 10y ago
Since they're all pretty much the same, the main factor appears to be missing: price.
- kumarski 10y ago
  they don't all disclose price publicly and I'd probably get a takedown notice if I posted prices, b/c they can always change and that's misleading the consumers.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    are you obligated to be accurate? I appreciate the list (thank you, or thank the curator) but I would imagine that if you are independent you have no obligation to be correct?
    - kumarski 10y ago
      Not sure.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    Then add some date/time so that you clearly only claim that at that date/time this was the price.
orliesaurus 10y ago
Its a great list but what's the context?
- kumarski 10y ago
  Twilio's IPO just occurred.
  - TrinaryWorksToo 10y ago
    Do you expect worse service because of the ipo?
antoncohen 10y ago
Thanks for the list. I would be really interested in SMS deliverability data by country or region for different SMS API providers. I think it is really key when choosing SMS providers, and it is hard data to get.
thefastlane 10y ago
wow, i'm out of the loop. what is everyone building with these types of APIs?
- martin_a 10y ago
  Two factor authentication and notifications of any type would be the two things that come up in my mind first.
  - nexxer 10y ago
    More: allowing contact from offline users (newspapers, tv, radio) and interacting with them, mobile payments.
homero 10y ago
I've done this before and HATED it. Outside the usa is a nightmare. I mostly used clickatell and tropo
bryanhun 10y ago
If anyone is looking for an SMS REST API using a shared short code, check out: https://api.mobiniti.com/v1/docs https://api.mobiniti.com/v1/docs
gue5t 10y ago
I really wish people would more clearly distinguish library APIs from RPC APIs exposed by corporations' servers. I have no desire to deal with another company but I would love an open-source library implementing the client side of MMS, or at least some readable documentation about how the hell it works.
- Kinnard 10y ago
  Do you have example of potential alternative naming schemes?
  - gue5t 10y ago
    I would refer to these as "services" and "libraries"; referring to either as an "API" is conflating a tool with its interface.
mngutterman 10y ago
I'm currently using Nexmo for a side project, but am looking to move. I recently had to buy some more numbers and realized Nexmo had almost none available. Anyone have this issue with other providers?
- aviv 10y ago
  Nexmo's inventory especially for North America numbers has been an issue for a while. Are you using them for Voice, SMS, or both?
  - mngutterman 10y ago
    Just SMS as of now. I'm looking into moving over to something with shortcodes now.
contingencies 10y ago
I've used both raw devices and 2 or 3 commercial SMS APIs to implement international SMS systems commercialy over the last 10 years: Middle East, Iran, Europe, East Asia, etc. IMHO the best are the ones that let you send raw SMS PDUs, which isn't that hard. If you want to do international SMS, and care about cost, then using non UCS2 encodings is a requirement. Without raw SMS PDU support, you are basically screwed. Swedish 42IT AB[0] was a good one though their capacity for and speed of detection of route failure was definitely not ideal. I've never needed inbound but did set it up with raw devices back in about 2005 and it worked fine. One technique few people use which I think is great is forwarding your service business' phone number to people as an SMS contact when people sign up to your website. This stuff is becoming a lost art. [0] http://fortytwotele.com/ http://fortytwotele.com/
yusiang 10y ago
It would be more useful if the list has inbound/2-way, raw PDU, long/shortcode, sender ID etc.
worldadventurer 10y ago
For those of you that don't want to code interactions (going beyond simple notifications) via SMS & especially Telephony/IVR calls - and also let your business team members build and manage these interaction flows via a browser instead, check us out: https://www.engageSPARK.com https://www.engageSPARK.com . Developers use our Subscription API to trigger an interactive SMS or IVR call campaign (that they've built via our website first) - by simply sending us the campaign ID and the recipient's phone number. This saves them days/weeks of coding to Twilio/Plivo/etc's APIs and they offload all changes to the interaction flows to their business team members. We've been used in 80+ countries, including by Intel and UN WFP. :)
benmmurphy 10y ago
We have an API for sending bulk SMS and libraries written in PHP, NodeJS, Python, Ruby, Java, C#, Go and Rust. You can try out the API and send some test messages to your phone straight from your browser at: https://zensend.io/#demo https://zensend.io/#demo . We have the most experience in the UK market because this is where we do most of our premium sms/direct billing business under another company (http://www.fonix.com/ http://www.fonix.com/) but we support bulk messaging to a lot of different countries (https://zensend.io/pricing https://zensend.io/pricing).
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  Oh neat! I hadn't seen this before. Any chance you all would like to get on http://rust-lang.org/friends.html http://rust-lang.org/friends.html ? :)
mooreds 10y ago
Thanks for putting this list together!
turkeywelder 10y ago
Dev from ClockworkSMS here. Just want to correct this list, as we definitely do support SSL, and we've just upgraded the certificate: https://www.clockworksms.com/blog/ssl-sha2/ https://www.clockworksms.com/blog/ssl-sha2/ If SSL isn't enough, we can also do VPNs directly to our (only UK based) datacentres. Feel free to ask questions if you have them. We've got good links to the US and great coverage throughout the rest of the world
marcelcor 10y ago
Hey dev from MessageBird here. We are "mollie-sms" on the list. We changed our name long ago and along with the name many other things: We support SMPP, SMPP over TLS, http apis that support TLS (with libs in many languages https://github.com/messagebird https://github.com/messagebird), SS7, easy delivery over all over the world (except North Korea). And many more exciting stuff coming up.
sarahmblox 10y ago
Hi, I wanted to add Mblox to this list, if possible. We provide HTTP, Rest and SMPP connections, along with web based applications. We have over 100 direct operator connections, as well as global coverage to over 978 networks. We offer MMS support within the US as well as approved US & Carrier SMS connections. I will be more than happy to speak to anyone regarding their requirements - please get in touch, Sarah.Cruttenden@mblox.com Look forward to hearing from you, Sarah https://www.mblox.com/ https://www.mblox.com/
sarahmblox 10y ago
Hi, I wanted to add Mblox to this list, if possible. We provide HTTP, Rest and SMPP connections, along with web based applications. We have over 100 direct operator connections, as well as global coverage to over 978 networks. We offer MMS support within the US as well as approved US & Carrier SMS connections. I will be more than happy to speak to anyone regarding their requirements - please get in touch, Sarah.Cruttenden@mblox.com Look forward to hearing from you, Sarah https://www.mblox.com/ https://www.mblox.com/

122 points by Glibaudio 10y ago

kumarski 10y ago

I see you reposted my post from an internal hackathon hackers post.

duvander 10y ago

The data appears to be culled from ProgrammableWeb.

kumarski 10y ago
correct. I had my outsourcer do it. not sure if they scraped it or used LinkKlipper.
- Jommi 10y ago
  Really fascinated of this kind of semi--outsourced work procedure. Outsource the manual data entry to somewhere else for a minimum cost and then focus on your core strengths alone.
  - kumarski 10y ago
    I outsource everything I suck at. So that tends to be a lot of stuff.

gremlinsinc 10y ago

Would be nice if it included pricing per # and per SMS msg sent, etc...and any other fees.

kumarski 10y ago
none of these companies will list their prices publicly... twilio will b/c they're probably slightly over priced. Always negotiate lower prices and shop around.
- pbreit 10y ago
  Plivo, Nexmo & Bandwidth all list their (much lower) pricing.
brightsize 10y ago
Here are the pricing pages for two services that I looked into as possible alternatives to Twilio: https://www.plivo.com/pricing/ https://www.plivo.com/pricing/ https://www.nexmo.com/products/sms/ https://www.nexmo.com/products/sms/
- mediaserf 10y ago
  I use both of these services and Flowroute https://www.flowroute.com/pricing/pricing-sms/- https://www.flowroute.com/pricing/pricing-sms/- Flowroute's pricing is really competitive. Nexmo has great analytics that show failures. Plivo will just fail and not log it and not return a failure, so I'm migrating away from them.

saarons 10y ago

I wish I had something like this sooner. I decided to go with Plivo for a side-project of mine and while my experience has been pleasant I really miss MMS support. I'm going to take some time going through this list evaluating different MMS providers. Anybody have any experience with a particular company on this list with MMS that they enjoy?

robbiep 10y ago
MMS Providers seem to be few and far between. Looking for an Australian offering at the moment - having some trouble. Any advice welcomed.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
cmdrfred 10y ago
Twilio is an obvious mention. More expensive than Pilvo (I never heard of them and only need SMS for a project of mine so thanks) but I've never had an issue. Twilio also supports carrier lookups, you might be able to leverage that and send emails to '@mms.att.net' and the like.
quentusrex 10y ago
I'm actively looking for MMS support, US as well as international.
- Animats 10y ago
  Twilio does MMS, both inbound and outbound. Pictures only for the US and Canada, though.

dipublio 10y ago

It would be good to know which of them support international numbers, or how many country it covers

reitanqild 10y ago
Seconded. (I am targeting Asia and Africa.)

pbreit 10y ago

Since they're all pretty much the same, the main factor appears to be missing: price.

kumarski 10y ago
they don't all disclose price publicly and I'd probably get a takedown notice if I posted prices, b/c they can always change and that's misleading the consumers.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  are you obligated to be accurate? I appreciate the list (thank you, or thank the curator) but I would imagine that if you are independent you have no obligation to be correct?
  - kumarski 10y ago
    Not sure.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  Then add some date/time so that you clearly only claim that at that date/time this was the price.

orliesaurus 10y ago

Its a great list but what's the context?

kumarski 10y ago
Twilio's IPO just occurred.
- TrinaryWorksToo 10y ago
  Do you expect worse service because of the ipo?

antoncohen 10y ago

Thanks for the list. I would be really interested in SMS deliverability data by country or region for different SMS API providers. I think it is really key when choosing SMS providers, and it is hard data to get.

thefastlane 10y ago

wow, i'm out of the loop. what is everyone building with these types of APIs?

martin_a 10y ago
Two factor authentication and notifications of any type would be the two things that come up in my mind first.
- nexxer 10y ago
  More: allowing contact from offline users (newspapers, tv, radio) and interacting with them, mobile payments.

homero 10y ago

I've done this before and HATED it. Outside the usa is a nightmare. I mostly used clickatell and tropo

bryanhun 10y ago

If anyone is looking for an SMS REST API using a shared short code, check out: https://api.mobiniti.com/v1/docs https://api.mobiniti.com/v1/docs

gue5t 10y ago

I really wish people would more clearly distinguish library APIs from RPC APIs exposed by corporations' servers. I have no desire to deal with another company but I would love an open-source library implementing the client side of MMS, or at least some readable documentation about how the hell it works.

Kinnard 10y ago
Do you have example of potential alternative naming schemes?
- gue5t 10y ago
  I would refer to these as "services" and "libraries"; referring to either as an "API" is conflating a tool with its interface.

mngutterman 10y ago

I'm currently using Nexmo for a side project, but am looking to move. I recently had to buy some more numbers and realized Nexmo had almost none available. Anyone have this issue with other providers?

aviv 10y ago
Nexmo's inventory especially for North America numbers has been an issue for a while. Are you using them for Voice, SMS, or both?
- mngutterman 10y ago
  Just SMS as of now. I'm looking into moving over to something with shortcodes now.

contingencies 10y ago

I've used both raw devices and 2 or 3 commercial SMS APIs to implement international SMS systems commercialy over the last 10 years: Middle East, Iran, Europe, East Asia, etc. IMHO the best are the ones that let you send raw SMS PDUs, which isn't that hard. If you want to do international SMS, and care about cost, then using non UCS2 encodings is a requirement. Without raw SMS PDU support, you are basically screwed. Swedish 42IT AB[0] was a good one though their capacity for and speed of detection of route failure was definitely not ideal. I've never needed inbound but did set it up with raw devices back in about 2005 and it worked fine. One technique few people use which I think is great is forwarding your service business' phone number to people as an SMS contact when people sign up to your website. This stuff is becoming a lost art. [0] http://fortytwotele.com/ http://fortytwotele.com/

yusiang 10y ago

It would be more useful if the list has inbound/2-way, raw PDU, long/shortcode, sender ID etc.

worldadventurer 10y ago

For those of you that don't want to code interactions (going beyond simple notifications) via SMS & especially Telephony/IVR calls - and also let your business team members build and manage these interaction flows via a browser instead, check us out: https://www.engageSPARK.com https://www.engageSPARK.com . Developers use our Subscription API to trigger an interactive SMS or IVR call campaign (that they've built via our website first) - by simply sending us the campaign ID and the recipient's phone number. This saves them days/weeks of coding to Twilio/Plivo/etc's APIs and they offload all changes to the interaction flows to their business team members. We've been used in 80+ countries, including by Intel and UN WFP. :)

benmmurphy 10y ago

We have an API for sending bulk SMS and libraries written in PHP, NodeJS, Python, Ruby, Java, C#, Go and Rust. You can try out the API and send some test messages to your phone straight from your browser at: https://zensend.io/#demo https://zensend.io/#demo . We have the most experience in the UK market because this is where we do most of our premium sms/direct billing business under another company (http://www.fonix.com/ http://www.fonix.com/) but we support bulk messaging to a lot of different countries (https://zensend.io/pricing https://zensend.io/pricing).

steveklabnik 10y ago
Oh neat! I hadn't seen this before. Any chance you all would like to get on http://rust-lang.org/friends.html http://rust-lang.org/friends.html ? :)

mooreds 10y ago

Thanks for putting this list together!

turkeywelder 10y ago

Dev from ClockworkSMS here. Just want to correct this list, as we definitely do support SSL, and we've just upgraded the certificate: https://www.clockworksms.com/blog/ssl-sha2/ https://www.clockworksms.com/blog/ssl-sha2/ If SSL isn't enough, we can also do VPNs directly to our (only UK based) datacentres. Feel free to ask questions if you have them. We've got good links to the US and great coverage throughout the rest of the world

marcelcor 10y ago

Hey dev from MessageBird here. We are "mollie-sms" on the list. We changed our name long ago and along with the name many other things: We support SMPP, SMPP over TLS, http apis that support TLS (with libs in many languages https://github.com/messagebird https://github.com/messagebird), SS7, easy delivery over all over the world (except North Korea). And many more exciting stuff coming up.

sarahmblox 10y ago

Hi, I wanted to add Mblox to this list, if possible. We provide HTTP, Rest and SMPP connections, along with web based applications. We have over 100 direct operator connections, as well as global coverage to over 978 networks. We offer MMS support within the US as well as approved US & Carrier SMS connections. I will be more than happy to speak to anyone regarding their requirements - please get in touch, Sarah.Cruttenden@mblox.com Look forward to hearing from you, Sarah https://www.mblox.com/ https://www.mblox.com/

sarahmblox 10y ago