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HN Special: Private Label SMS & API

9 points by vlBeta 17y ago

Hi HN, Long time lurker, first time poster. Want to get your opinion on our new product offering, Private Label SMS. We've provided messaging services for a while now, but have just recently decided to open up our messaging platform to the public. Disregard the pricing on the page, we're offering a special deal to HN participants for a limited time -- $500/mo flat rate, $.02 out, $.00 in. http://privatelabelsms.com Also, we're considering selling full licenses to the platform. Let us know if that's something you'd be interested in.

timmaah 17y ago
Bookmarked.. Will be useful in a current project I'm working on, but still months away to digging into that side of it.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ytspar 17y ago
Thanks for the upvotes! Cofounder here, thought I'd add a clickable link to what might interest you more: http://privatelabelsms.com/api http://privatelabelsms.com/api Looking at my account created 872 days ago, I'll take this as the impetus I need to actually participate. Any questions on SMS or the mobile industry in general? I've seen a lot of confusion and misinformation on the topic, and regrettably I didn't make strides to correct it then.
- e1ven 17y ago
  Can you help me understand what separates this from using clickatell, for instance? I can see that you're API seems designed to handle quite a bit of complexity in what to do when, I just don't understand the value-add yet. Is this lower-level or higher? Who is your target market? I see you're supporting SMPP, which is great for high-volume transfers, but I'm willing to bet most web-developers would prefer HTTP posts for each message, or a single HTTP post with a bunch of JSON/XML messages they want to send. Is that a Wufoo form at the bottom? Nicely done ;) I guess my core comment comes down to, you've explained very nicely that you're a "A robust, flexible & complete private-label SMS marketing solution".. But what IS that, and why do I want one? What is the value-add over dealing with SMS gateways directly? Or is this an example of "If you have to ask, you're not our target market ;) "
  - ytspar 17y ago
    The API was developed primarily around our own - and by extension, clients' - needs, which are more application and real-time notification oriented (I don't want to come off as spammy listing some of the use cases, but can do so if there's interest - some neat stuff there, IMO), rather than just focused on mobile marketing. I haven't looked at Clickatell's offering in a while, and normally don't get past the pricing tables (https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/pricing_wizard.php https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/pricing_wizard.php) when I mean to. The relevant comparison there would be with their two-way messaging services, for which you need a shortcode (Clickatell's explication, https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/shortcodes.php https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/shortcodes.php, and Wikipedia's, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code). Why you need a shortcode is another post, if you're curious. We do run our own SMPP binds, but for most developers we offer an HTTP API, which we use internally. And we're Rails guys, if that's meaningful. SMPP would be the way to deal with SMS gateways directly, so we're just as 'direct' as Clickatell, though the most direct way is working with the carriers on your own. You can listen to Fabrice Grinda talk about how much fun that is (http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grinda_of_z.html http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grind...). The next tier down are the aggregators (http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596515133/using_an_sms_aggregator http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596515133/using_an_sms_a..., and a less charitable take here, http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/the-problem-with-sms-aggregators/ http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/the-problem-with-sms-agg...), who abstract the carrier connections for you. Just below that are companies like ours. The differentiators at that level are pricing, live shortcodes, two-way messaging, APIs, and experience in building mobile apps. Plus dealing with carrier problems. Mobile messaging can be discouragingly complex and costly. So our ideal client would be another startup or SMB that could benefit from having comparable binds to an aggregator, without the months of setup and at a fraction of the price. Basically, we'd like to be a company we wish had existed when we were getting started. You would have to do decent volume to make it worthwhile, so it's not for everyone. The nice thing about not going mass-market is that we can be a bit more flexible. For example, we don't cap the number of top-tier keywords we offer, so you can use them for A/B testing across, say, print ads in different newspapers. Or you can resell them to customers. And yes, that's a Wufoo form... we have them set up on other sites, usually with a bit more attention paid to the CSS. We don't have to build forwarders and reporting tools - even a couple hours of dev time here and there add up, so we ruthlessly outsource non-core activities :) BTW, I've used Free411, great service.

9 points by vlBeta 17y ago

timmaah 17y ago

Bookmarked.. Will be useful in a current project I'm working on, but still months away to digging into that side of it.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ytspar 17y ago

Thanks for the upvotes! Cofounder here, thought I'd add a clickable link to what might interest you more: http://privatelabelsms.com/api http://privatelabelsms.com/api Looking at my account created 872 days ago, I'll take this as the impetus I need to actually participate. Any questions on SMS or the mobile industry in general? I've seen a lot of confusion and misinformation on the topic, and regrettably I didn't make strides to correct it then.

e1ven 17y ago
Can you help me understand what separates this from using clickatell, for instance? I can see that you're API seems designed to handle quite a bit of complexity in what to do when, I just don't understand the value-add yet. Is this lower-level or higher? Who is your target market? I see you're supporting SMPP, which is great for high-volume transfers, but I'm willing to bet most web-developers would prefer HTTP posts for each message, or a single HTTP post with a bunch of JSON/XML messages they want to send. Is that a Wufoo form at the bottom? Nicely done ;) I guess my core comment comes down to, you've explained very nicely that you're a "A robust, flexible & complete private-label SMS marketing solution".. But what IS that, and why do I want one? What is the value-add over dealing with SMS gateways directly? Or is this an example of "If you have to ask, you're not our target market ;) "
- ytspar 17y ago
  The API was developed primarily around our own - and by extension, clients' - needs, which are more application and real-time notification oriented (I don't want to come off as spammy listing some of the use cases, but can do so if there's interest - some neat stuff there, IMO), rather than just focused on mobile marketing. I haven't looked at Clickatell's offering in a while, and normally don't get past the pricing tables (https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/pricing_wizard.php https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/pricing_wizard.php) when I mean to. The relevant comparison there would be with their two-way messaging services, for which you need a shortcode (Clickatell's explication, https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/shortcodes.php https://www.clickatell.com/pricing/shortcodes.php, and Wikipedia's, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code). Why you need a shortcode is another post, if you're curious. We do run our own SMPP binds, but for most developers we offer an HTTP API, which we use internally. And we're Rails guys, if that's meaningful. SMPP would be the way to deal with SMS gateways directly, so we're just as 'direct' as Clickatell, though the most direct way is working with the carriers on your own. You can listen to Fabrice Grinda talk about how much fun that is (http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grinda_of_z.html http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grind...). The next tier down are the aggregators (http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596515133/using_an_sms_aggregator http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596515133/using_an_sms_a..., and a less charitable take here, http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/the-problem-with-sms-aggregators/ http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/the-problem-with-sms-agg...), who abstract the carrier connections for you. Just below that are companies like ours. The differentiators at that level are pricing, live shortcodes, two-way messaging, APIs, and experience in building mobile apps. Plus dealing with carrier problems. Mobile messaging can be discouragingly complex and costly. So our ideal client would be another startup or SMB that could benefit from having comparable binds to an aggregator, without the months of setup and at a fraction of the price. Basically, we'd like to be a company we wish had existed when we were getting started. You would have to do decent volume to make it worthwhile, so it's not for everyone. The nice thing about not going mass-market is that we can be a bit more flexible. For example, we don't cap the number of top-tier keywords we offer, so you can use them for A/B testing across, say, print ads in different newspapers. Or you can resell them to customers. And yes, that's a Wufoo form... we have them set up on other sites, usually with a bit more attention paid to the CSS. We don't have to build forwarders and reporting tools - even a couple hours of dev time here and there add up, so we ruthlessly outsource non-core activities :) BTW, I've used Free411, great service.