SMS via Web App

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What I do is make the user send a PIN confirmation from their phone to the app. When you receive their message you parse their cell number and carrier. This lets you do two things. Confirm that they own the cell phone and confirm their cell carrier.
 


DavidR said:
What I do is make the user send a PIN confirmation from their phone to the app. When you receive their message you parse their cell number and carrier. This lets you do two things. Confirm that they own the cell phone and confirm their cell carrier.
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What if they ported the number to a different carrier?
 
Well if you're constantly receiving SMS updates from them you just check if the carrier has changed. If you're not receiving any updates and only send them content, you can do a couple of things. Obviously you'd know that the message is failing to send. You can iterate through your known list of carriers to find the right one. Email the user (if they gave their email to you) and let them know to update their carrier. Make your users know to change their carriers on the site when they change carriers. Or the best possible way would be to buy a SMS short code and you'll never have to worry about it.

tweak50 said:
What if they ported the number to a different carrier?
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DavidR said:
Well if you're constantly receiving SMS updates from them you just check if the carrier has changed. If you're not receiving any updates and only send them content, you can do a couple of things. Obviously you'd know that the message is failing to send. You can iterate through your known list of carriers to find the right one. Email the user (if they gave their email to you) and let them know to update their carrier. Make your users know to change their carriers on the site when they change carriers. Or the best possible way would be to buy a SMS short code and you'll never have to worry about it.
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Fair enough. So if you were looking to send bulk sms one way messages, who would you go to for a short code?
 
Honestly I wouldn't use a short code unless I was also receiving a ton of SMS messages. You would probably be better off paying a gateway so you don't have to deal with carriers. Unless of course you feel like rolling your own solution.

There are a few providers of SMS short codes and if I remember correctly they cost around $3k/mo plus setup fees and I think even traffic fees. Sometimes you can lease a short code with another company to cut your costs so that may be an option too.
 
Gents - No need to spend money on a shortcode or an SMS Gateway until you start doing tons of volume.
I wrote a PHP script very similar to Patrick & NonProphet, and it works fine. It could not be any easier.
 
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