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Many cell (mobile) phone providers in the USA have an email gateway for SMS that allows anyone to send an email that will in turn send a text message. For example, to send a text-message to a user who has a Verizon phone you can send an email to [email protected].

But... how reliable are these gateways, and what limitations are there on the rate of messages that can be sent? At some point do the providers block or throttle service?

Is there anyone out there who is using this type of email/SMS gateway for either a high volume or high reliability application?

A: 

Your best bet is to find a third party email-to-sms provider. They are also considerably cheaper when you buy sms in bulk. My suspicion is that most providers would frown on anything more than casual use of this service. But to make sure you'll have to check each providers terms.

Here is a list to start looking:

http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Mobile_Computing/Wireless_Data/Short_Messaging_Service/

Nifle
Thanks for the reply. The third party provider will probably be more reliable and support higher volumes than the free email->SMS gateway. However, there is a price for that (typically 5-10 cents per message)...
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+8  A: 

The email-to-SMS gateways are generally reliable, given a few conditions (read below). Whether you should use an email-to-SMS gateway or an actual third-party provider depends on the application. If you're going to need a lot of control over the formatting of the messages, collecting replies, etc., then go with a third-party provider. If it's a simple notification you are sending your users, go with email-to-SMS.

If you send too many messages from the same email address, the messages will start backing up. For instance, I sent a message out to about 3,000 AT&T Wireless recipients, and some received the messages up to 3 days later. But typically, sending 10-30/minute won't cause any problems.

I use email-to-SMS gateways for an iPhone application that I built. It sends probably 10 messages per minute to almost all U.S. carriers, and it rarely experiences problems.

There are three main issues that I run into with the email-to-SMS gateway:

  • You don't have control over what the message looks like. Every carrier is different. For some, the recipient will show the email address and others will show the name. Some include the subject line of the email, some don't.
  • You can't control what number the messages come from. Fortunately, the general population typically reads all text messages sent to them regardless of the sender's number.
  • You can't control the replies without a server-side script to manage incoming email. For most carriers, a reply from the phone goes back to the sender's email address.
James Skidmore
Thanks, that is very helpful.
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Happy to share my experiences with it :)
James Skidmore
It seems like it might be possible to avoid (or reduce) the message-backing-up issue (3 day delay when sending a large batch) that you mentioned by using a pool of email addresses when sending the emails. I guess each provider has different throttling rules (which probably change with time). I have called Verizon to see if there is a limit on emails sent to their vtext.com gateway and the customer service rep was unable to find any documented limit. To really get to the bottom of this (figure out the throttling rules) I guess some experimentation would be needed.
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Having a pool of email addresses to send from is definitely a solid option. I'm not sure whether it looks at it by domain name or by the sender's IP, but it wouldn't be too hard to figure out with some experimentation.
James Skidmore
A: 

You might also like to consider the skype route which has the advantage that you can use it how and when you like and its completey under your control - email to sms But I have to admit that I use a third party email to sms gateway and it works fine but its has limitations on what email addresses can be converted to sms i.e. they have to be sent to the companies SMTP server using a supplied email address

mikej
Thanks. Looking at skype's web site it looks like the rate for sending SMS messages is over 10 cents per message which is more expensive than a typical third-party provider (5-10 cents), assuming I am looking at the right pricing (USA to USA SMS messages based on http://www.skype.com/prices/smsrates/?currency=USD).
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Yes I'd agree - if you need to send bulk SMS messages Skype isn't the way to go for cost reasons. I only needed to send a few SMS messages but I needed flexibility of message source and that was easier using Skype as a complete system
mikej