What do I need to set up my web app to accept input via email and sms?

Question

I'm trying to enable some basic commands via email. Currently I have shared hosting accounts with shell access at dreamhost and site5. I usually use php/drupal, but am open to other options. I found this question, but I'm looking for something more basic: what do I need to configure where to create a hello world app that responds to email? Are there (free) services out there that will make the basic set up easier? I'm pretty open to using any kind of email address, since this is for a personal project at the moment....

Answer 1

For email, it would be pretty easy to setup a cron job that pulls in email via POP3, then loops through and responds to them.

For example, you could do it with a Python script using the poplib (http://docs.python.org/library/poplib.html) library. Then just have cron call your script every 5 minutes.