
Show HN: TextIt – Visually build SMS applications anywhere in the world - nicpottier
http://textit.in
======
nicpottier
Hi HN,

We've been working in Rwanda for the past three years building interactive SMS
systems for NGOs. This is our take on how to build a platform instead of
custom systems to handle a lot of the needs here. We think it probably has
some uses in the west as well.

Happy to answer any questions and respond to comments, curious to hear
everybody's feedback. (please be gentle, not in the face!)

~~~
josh2600
Hi!

Thanks for submitting this. I'm a big telecom geek and I am curious about your
connection to the phone network (specifically, how are you enabling these SMS
to actually go out?).

Is this sitting on top of something like Twilio, or do you have an underlying
switch? What's the magic here? Is this just an interface for laying out SMS
strategies or is there more to this?

It looks visually appealing, I think you did an excellent job on the site, but
the technical portion is difficult for me to divine.

Thank you for the hard work!

Edit: Wait, is this not SMS and actually just a messaging service delivered
over the top? If so, calling it SMS is sort of dubious. Would adore some
clarification.

~~~
nicpottier
Just to build on what Eric said, we either use a single Android phone to relay
messages for you or integrate with Twilio or another aggregator.

We work a lot in Africa and there are no Twilios here, and integrating with
multiple carriers is both really expensive and really time consuming. So what
we do instead is have the organization that is deploying a TextIt buy a cheap
Android phone (they are less than $100) and load our app on it.

From then on SMS messages that are received by the phone are forwarded to
TextIt and we route replies through it. It works amazingly well and lets
people deploy apps literally anywhere in just a few minutes.

~~~
mrtimo
just curious, how much does it cost to send/receive SMS on a cell phone in
Rwanda or other parts of Africa?

I see there is a limit of 30 messages in 30 minutes, is this carrier induced?

~~~
nicpottier
The 30/30 limit is actually an Android limit, and one we get around if you
install the 'message packs'. We've had handsets send around 1000 messages an
hour without problem.

SMS prices vary a lot by plan and country, but here in Rwanda it is 10 RWFs
per SMS on carrier, which translates to about 1.5cs. There are various
promotions you can get to lower that further, in Kenya you can buy a message
pack that brings the price down to less than .5c each.

Oh note that it is always free to receive calls and SMS messages in Africa, as
everything is pre-paid.

~~~
yread
That's brilliant! I've worked in SMS business and dealing with the aggregators
and their shitty connections was really annoying.

If you have such low prices for messages you can't be on roaming right? So you
have to have a phone in each of the countries?

Also have you considered the legal side of the business - there is massive
amount of regulation in a lot of countries (not only western, I remember we
worked in SA and it was regulated too) - would you just disable accounts after
abuse or are you monitoring it?

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acoleman616
Great landing page. The way it presents a use case from start-to-finish,
integrating product shots to display how the interface works, is done very
well.

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pak
A very similar-looking product for phone applications, called QuickFuse, is
here: [http://quickfuseapps.com/](http://quickfuseapps.com/)

I think the diagram-as-programming concept has some legs for certain high-
business-value, low-complexity applications. One of them is voice
applications, and another is probably SMS applications. You can imagine many
others: email workflows, document workflows, query tools...

It comes down to the age-old problem of how to represent and store logic in a
fashion that end users aren't afraid to manipulate.

Disclosure: I worked on QuickFuse.

~~~
nicpottier
QuickFuse looks really nice, congrats! I very much like that you let people
play with the interface without signing up, might have to ape that. Where's
the pricing though?

Obviously we agree visual interfaces have some real advantages, especially for
things that are conversations (SMS, Voice, USSD). The real trick is managing
to keep things simple as complexity increases.

I think the most interesting aspect for us has been to see project owners, the
ones who go out to the field themselves, build applications that fit their use
cases instead of having the cognitive barrier of communicating their needs to
a programmer first.

Anyways, fun stuff, thanks for sharing.

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jasperr
HN,

Interactive SMS systems fill a much needed niche that has been largely
neglected in favor of "smart apps". It's great to see that someone has
developed a platform for building custom applications. Great job.

~~~
camilo_u
Exactly, we have to realize that those countries where the mobile penetration
is ridiculous high, more than 95%, like any country in Africa, Asia and Latin
America is basically driven by feature phones, and that will be the scenario
for several years more.

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tpsc
Well done! Plus, it is great to see an old Nokia instead of another iPhone on
the hero shot. It is really intriguing in combination with this slick, modern
design of yours.

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andrelesa
Hi Nic,

This is nice, I am the developer on Ureport Zambia and we are currently using
RapidSMS http router. Thanks alot and good work on all. Now am off to look at
textit!!

~~~
nicpottier
Hey hey!

I think you guys should give a hard look at TextIt, it was very much built
with UReport and the like in mind, essentially taking things that worked
really well and polishing the hell out of them. Definitely reach out via email
if you have any questions or if we can do something to help out, integrating
with an SMSC is totally possible.

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maged
Just a heads up, your link to Android SMS Relay is broken here
([http://nyaruka.com/#open](http://nyaruka.com/#open)). I think you intended
to link this one [https://github.com/nyaruka/android-sms-
relay](https://github.com/nyaruka/android-sms-relay).

But great stuff! I'm going to try and play around with it over the next few
weeks.

~~~
nicpottier
Heh, actually both those links are wrong, that is a standalone relayer that we
built before TextIt, it does simple polling instead of the fancy TextIt one
that uses GCM. The one for TextIt is called 'TextIt' in the Play store.

But thanks, I'll fix it, didn't think to go update the corporate website.

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playhard
I love this app! Textit should focus on small businesses/ people who cannot
afford a developer to start a sms service rather than directly competing
against Twilio for enterprise customers. Great job!

~~~
nicpottier
We definitely don't compete with Twilio, rather we are built on them wherever
we can. We only really recommend using an Android phone as the SMS bridge if
you are somewhere that has no good aggregator.

You totally nailed our target customer though, we want to enable small the
medium sized businesses, not enterprise.

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jpollock
That is very cool!

As a user, I'd be careful about throwing a lot of messages through a single
phone though, you will likely trigger a carrier's anti-arbitrage systems. You
might find your business cut off with no warning, complete with police raids.

Carriers are sensitive because they're seeing people throw 30-60 SIMs into a
box and advertising cheap wholesale SMS and voice termination routes. (Google
"SIM box fraud")

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NSAID
Wow, perfect timing. Just last week I started teaching myself Android
development just so I could write something like
[https://github.com/nyaruka/android-sms-
relay](https://github.com/nyaruka/android-sms-relay). Any chance for MMS
support(receiving and sending) in the future?

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krrishd
Ben Haggerty is macklemore's name...

~~~
nicpottier
Was wondering if someone would notice that.

Eric and I are from Seattle and are big Macklemore fans. :) There are a few
other easter eggs in a similar vain on the site.

~~~
mynameisvlad
You even gave him a 206 number, that's cute. :)

~~~
nicpottier
Yep. Here's a hint, check out our API docs.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Haha that was great. I liked the follow up from the Web Hooks API to the
Simulator.

~~~
nicpottier
Glad someone enjoyed that. I think I had Thrift Shop on repeat while building
the API pages one weekend. :)

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camilo_u
The perfect tool for "smart" apps on feature phones, good work guys!

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sravfeyn
Amazing simplicity in a complex app-builder product, from the surveyor-
perspective . From end-user perspective though, I think it's a difficult to do
very long surveys through SMS's.

~~~
nicpottier
I think that's a fair point for sure. You don't want to do 40 questions flows
with this. But we've seen really good success with flows of 5-10 questions,
even with recipients who have limited literacy and technical know how. But
yes, there are of course limits and you have to be sensitive to your users.
Really every context and use case is so unique it is hard to even give
guidelines there.

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kunil
First thing on web page is asking my mail for possible spams. No thanks. At
least you could describe it first and then ask for my mail... to use in spams.

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antoinec
Great! I'm not surprised to see that it comes from Africa, there are really
huge opportunities there in term of SMS-only application.

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650REDHAIR
Wow.

Not only is the interface pretty, it's quite good, too!

Awesome work!

~~~
nicpottier
Aw shucks, thanks guys. :)

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oevi
Is the visual interface build from scratch or based upon an existing
framework?

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ylem
Besides your graphical interface, will you expose an api?

~~~
nicpottier
API docs here: [https://textit.in/api/v1](https://textit.in/api/v1)

We're adding a lot more APIs around flows very soon.

~~~
ismaelc
I added your API in Mashape!
[https://www.mashape.com/community/textit#!documentation](https://www.mashape.com/community/textit#!documentation)
Please email me at chris@mashape.com so we can help you promote it to
developers

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saltcod
Really cool. What's the technology behind this?

~~~
nicpottier
Which part? We are a Django stack, though with our own framework over it:
[https://github.com/nyaruka/smartmin](https://github.com/nyaruka/smartmin)

The main Flow UI leans heavily on JSPlumb. We use Angular JS for our analytics
side and use the mad combination of HAML, Coffescript and LESS to avoid
writing closing tags in anything at all.

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itsbits
Nice...so can we use our own SMS gateway on top???

~~~
nicpottier
Yes, if you already have a relationship with a carrier or aggregator we can
help get you hooked up. Just get in touch.

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mig39
Very cool. Anybody do a CAT FACTS version yet?

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m_mueller
small typo: 'per mounth' instead of month for silver plan

~~~
DarkStar851
Glad I'm not the only OCD.
[https://textit.in/public/pricing/](https://textit.in/public/pricing/)

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FabriceKwizera
Awesome app for real

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rafaqueque
Amazing!

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jhull
congrats guys!

