Thread: SMS Gateways

I've used it, but it didn't work in the UK

I'd recommend ClickATell too

I'd second clickatell as well - easy to setup and use, reasonable pricing too - I'm pretty sure somebody on this board also offers this service, but I cannot recall offhand who it is.

Cheers,
Sean

I've been using sms2email (part of AQL) which allows me to setup a distribution list and send a single email which then gets sent out to xx number of mobiles.

Seem a bit shit, using it for monitoring so it's quite important that the alerts get sent out.

Any suggestions? Ideally the SMTP server would be theirs too, so I can send directly to them instead of through mine.

I guess the other robust alternative is to get a mobile hooked up to the server.

We use a Falcom Tango 55 GSM modem hooked up to a server via a serial cable, then use SMSTools (Stefan Frings - SMS Server Tools) with a bunch of scripts to send messages and track the receipt status and log into a MySQL database. It means we can guarantee that a message was sent and track if it was received. No dependancies on other providers. Nagios then posts to a PHP page on the SMS server to send a message.

I've never really looked into getting a mobile hooked up to a server. How difficult would it be to get a server and mobile in a DC, then dial in/out over IP to the server?

I'd recommend ClickATell for you James, I've got it doing exactly the same thing. I've also made a light-weight PHP script on a personal server and even lighter HTML page living on my mobile, simply use Opera/IE on the phone to compose a text and send it to a contact (I've got no idea how to create a mobile application which can tap into the phone contacts, and then send form contents over the web) and then gets an OK response from the script, script talks to ClickATell, etc.

'From' is my mobile, so replies come to me as usual. With the quantity of credits in ClickATell, texts cost 3p or so, while mobile operator wants 10p and unlimited GPRS/EDGE on mobile tariff.

Doesn't make alot of sense, but I was bored

Another vote for ClickATell.

Past experiences have been good - reasonable rates.

smstools and your choice of mobile device - if you're sending a lot of texts you can burn through sims, but IMHO much more reliable that clickatell etc as if connectivity to them is iffy you still get the texts.

we're set up systems with it and nagios, in/out messages so you can reply and reboot a box remotely etc - all very easy, and buying the book is worthwhile.

But you don't necessarily need to use a mobile. A USB 3g stick would do from what i've read. Or one of the more suitable GSM modems.

Originally Posted by burble

I'd have thought strapping a mobile in at the data centre brings its own issues. I guess if you're paranoid, a combination of the two couldn't hurt.

It's not particularly hard to write some code to talk to a gsm modem these days (eg not a mobile phone but a real gsm modem that has a supported API), our chaps did it in about a day IIRC... send sms via a gsm modem and if for some reason the sms can't be sent that way fallback to aspsms. We can easily add more usb gsm modems in to send higher volumes.

Can you actually get a signal to a modem in a DC? Whenever I've tried to make/receive calls in BlueSquare or Node4 the signal is really low or non-existent. I would have thought it would be even worse inside a rack.