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Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App
I am developing a web application(using codeigniter) and want SMS integration so data can be queried over a cell phone in US. Do I need to talk to the phone service providers ? How does it work ?
- laxman 18y agoI am developing a web application using php language.I want to integration sms in my website.what should i do?cost is no problem?
- wave 18y agoCheapest way http://www.textmarks.com http://www.textmarks.com Also been discussed in the following posts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224324 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224324 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211853 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211853
- chrisbolt 18y agoYou can use an SMS gateway like http://www.clickatell.com/ http://www.clickatell.com/
- nasser 18y agoOur 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.
- code_devil 18y agoYeah, I would love to know more about it.
- meredydd 18y agoIf you wouldn't mind, I'd find that very useful. I live and work in non-US markets, and US carriers' behaviour strikes me as idiosyncratic and frankly bizarre :)
- streety 18y agoI would be interested as well.
- car 18y agoWe've had a good experience with Clickatell, but only used them to send verification SMSs to our worldwide users. In the US, a Clickatell SMS will come from their shortcode, which is perfectly fine. No need to pay big bucks for your own shortcode, like some SMS providers want you to believe. If you need to receive SMS, it's a different story. You could get a UK number, which is much cheaper then a US shortcode, but might look weird to your US users.
- markbao 18y agoIf 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code
- schtog 18y agoRelated/similar: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224324 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224324
- phpdev 18y agoI recommend http://zong.com/ http://zong.com/ They have an API.
- pjackson 18y agoMost 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.
- code_devil 18y agoThanks ... I will definitely take a peek on it.