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Ask HN: How do you handle SMS and MMS?
I want to send and receive SMS and MMS from my computer. My carrier has been extremely unreliable and I am sick of paying them for bad service. Are there any good tech solutions for this?
- BruiseLee 5y agoYou'll need some service provider that will route your messages for you. Twilio is the probably the biggest, but my recommendation would be Telnyx.
- mikecoles 5y agovoip.ms has worked well for my needs. As BruiseLee stated, Twilio is probably the largest and most integrated.
- s_m 5y agoTwilio is famously good at SMS/MMS (disclosure: I work there)
- spicybright 5y agoI can attest to this. You pay money into an account, use a library (most languages are supported), and are charged per text (I think one cent for normal SMS?) Messages are received by specifying a URL end point to twilio it will send the data to. I liked the good documentation, and the free demo period. You get access to everything, just with an "ad" at the end of everything you send. (I've built a few apps with this and had no issues)
- cableshaft 5y agoWe just integrated SMS support into our software platform, and went with Twilio. It's working great so far!
- shanecleveland 5y agoTwilio handles SMS and MMS for my https://textpost.me https://textpost.me side project. Great platform and reliability.
- totony 5y agoAlso note that twillio has shown[0] it will cut off your service if it disagrees with you. [0] https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/twilio-jeff-lawson-parler-aws https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/twilio-jeff-lawson-parle...
- cpach 5y agoSeems very reasonable to me.
- totony 5y agoSeems reasonable until you're the target. I personally think companies each enforcing their moral compass w/r to whom their customers can be creates too much of an unstable landscape (particularly societal). This is one of the reason we have more and more protected classes. Political ideology just isn't one (yet?)
- France_is_bacon 5y agoPeople calling for the overthrow of a democratically elected government is not a "protected class." Plotting an overthrow is not political ideology. Demagoguery pandering to the ignorant and uneducated should not be a protected class. All of this applies equally to Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Peace and Freedom, Green Party, etc. By the way, I personally am 100% independent, I think all political parties are pretty idiotic. Just saying. But, to bring it full circle, I don't think that someone selling socks or underwear on Twilio is going to be banned. When that happens, ok. Furthermore, I know people believe in freedom of expression, and more or less capitalism. I know the Republican Party members side pretty heavily with the cake maker that refused to make cakes for gay weddings, or Catholic hospitals that refuse to offer birth control pills or abortions. But for some reason, when a privately owned company like Twillio, or Facebook, or whomever wants to limit their customer base, it's always a different story, then. For me, yes. For you, no.
- totony 5y ago>Plotting an overthrow is not political ideology. Demagoguery pandering to the ignorant and uneducated should not be a protected class. Who decides what is overthrow/bad speech? Are they fallible? Do you think protecting the "ignorant masses" is beneficial to democracy? If you have someone dictate what can be said to you, won't that make you less able to think for yourself? >I know the Republican Party members side pretty heavily with the cake maker that refused to make cakes for gay weddings Although I agree there always are logically inconsistent people, I don't think this backs it up. Cakes matter so much less than than speech. I haven't thought/not familiar with the hospitals so that might be more appropriate. >But, to bring it full circle, I don't think that someone selling socks or underwear on Twilio is going to be banned. When that happens, ok. Yes, but they have shown they want a say in how you conduct your business. What if they ban you for doing business with certain people, what prevents them? (Not their morals as far as they've shown). Not saying it's likely you will get banned, but I think it should be considered so companies don't all start doing this and you have to shop companies+moral compass.
- iSloth 5y agoTwilio or MessageBird are worth a look at.
- kop316 5y agoSome folks I know use this to help test MMS on the Pinephone. https://jmp.chat/faq/ https://jmp.chat/faq/ I imagine it'll do what you want.
- ops3936 5y agoI am using Inteliquent for my start up. I believe they are behind Twilio, telnyx and Messagebird.
- suyash 5y agoCheckout RingCentral's offering (API's) for both SMS and MMS. They also have a web app that you can use without needing to write code to send SMS https://developers.ringcentral.com/api-products/sms https://developers.ringcentral.com/api-products/sms
- mindslight 5y agoDoes anybody know a programmatic VOIP provider that will appear as a standard mobile number? I've got a voip.ms number that cannot text with some other providers (like xfinity phone service), and website snake oil auth doesn't like it either. I've got another number with Google Voice that hasn't had these problems (I think because it looks just like a Project Fi number), but the lack of software choice sucks. I'd love to move away from Google, even if it means paying a bit, but the number has got to work as a general number. I've got a plan to set up a fixed cell modem with a cheap SIM for snakeoil auth, etc, but that won't help for keeping a long term well-known number.
- Nextgrid 5y agoAndrews & Arnold can provide real UK mobile numbers.
- ademup 5y agoBeen using twilio for over 4 years. 300-500 sms per day. Never a single issue, I don't recal having to adjust code in a few years. Couldn't be happier.
- spicybright 5y agoFor real. My code has been stable for 4 years too. Not changing the API is a huge, normally overlooked feature to products.
- przeor 5y agowww.SMSAPI.com is good and cheap and reliable for this