SMS Gateways

J-B · 1st September 2008

Hi,

Does anyone have any recommendations for SMS gateway software?

I have found this product does anyone have any experiences or found anything better.

SMS Gateway - for Software developers and Service providers

Looking to hookup a couple of modems to it

Thanks

Julian

M8INTERNET · 1st September 2008

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

burble · 1st September 2008

Take a look at Clickatell (http://www.clickatell.com/). Their pricing is reasonable, and their API has examples in most common languages (although avoid the e-mail API, it's a pain to debug)

JSamuel · 2nd September 2008

I'd recommend ClickATell too

dch · 2nd September 2008

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

JamesSykes · 2nd September 2008

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.

heypresto · 2nd September 2008

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.

JSamuel · 2nd September 2008

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

[GWG]Ryan · 2nd September 2008

Another vote for ClickATell.

Past experiences have been good

- reasonable rates.

othellotech · 2nd September 2008

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.

burble · 3rd September 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesSykes

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.

I use clickatell's HTTP API - more reliable than e-mail (less to go wrong, easier to debug), and you get back a synchronous response so that your monitoring script can immediately decide whether or not to escalate to an alternative provider etc.

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.

midnightsoftwar · 3rd September 2008

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.

markcastle · 4th September 2008

Quote:

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.

burble · 4th September 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by midnightsoftwar

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.

True, meant it more as a figure of speech - although I did once see an array of mobiles strapped to the side of a rack in a data centre. My point was more that someone like clickatell is going to have a much more reliable setup than would be practical for a simple monitoring solution, so I'd probably use them as the first place I tried.

Of course though, an sms can get held up - if you want to be certain, hook your monitoring up to asterisk and festival, and get your machine to ring you when something goes wrong

(The winky face implies I'm joking, but I actually did set something like this up

)

freethought · 4th September 2008

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.