

Howto add SMS functionality to your web app - dimitry
http://www.gumband.com/

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JustAGeek
Am I the only one considering it a bit dodgy that the headline of this
submission sounds like this was eg a blog post describing how to add SMS but
instead you get to a commercial site?

I mean, I'd have nothing against this if the submitter had asked for
feedback/review or simply had used a more honest title. :/

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Zarathu
Wow! I really like this!

It seems to be a simple, flexible version of TextMarks, without all the
bullshit.

[edit] Yeah, you should publish the prices on the page. It appears to be 5¢
per SMS, or $25 for 500.

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InclinedPlane
Who are you? Verizon?

I think you mean 0.05$ not 0.05¢. There is a difference, and it's rather
significant ($25/500 vs. $0.25/500).

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Zarathu
What are you talking about? :D

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InclinedPlane
You made the same factor of 100 mistake that Verizon seems to make a lot. As
it turns out, most people care about a factor of 100 when it comes to the
amount of money that they owe.

<http://failblog.org/2009/02/04/verizon-math-fail/>

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uggedal
Is this US only? What is the pricing?

The landing page or at least the "learn more" page should have answered these
questions.

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jsm386
As other commenters noted, they are providing something that a lot of other
companies provide, such as the company I work for, Ez Texting.

Here's my plug: we can deliver to the US and Canada, our prices start @ 5
cents an SMS and go down from there, we've got a memorable short code (313131)
and we already support a lot of people through our API.
<http://www.eztexting.com/api.html>

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kevinholesh
I knew you were from Pittsburgh as soon as I saw your name!

Interesting product, but your "How it works" page would be more comprehensible
with a diagram or a flow chart.

This would be an excellent product if you need a short code, but $0.05 is a
little steep for me. I'd rather use an email address (text@gumband.com for
example) to send my SMS messages.

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dimitry
Also, more about how it works: <http://www.gumband.com/learnmore.php>

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atamyrat
With Gumband, your users send to the shared shortcode with your keyword, but
if you want a dedicated/international incoming SMS number, I've been happy
user of <http://csoft.co.uk/> for about 2 years now.

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nixme
Why do SMS web service prices vary so much? How does this service do a better
job than Penny SMS who charge $0.01/message and provide return messages via
email? <https://www.pennysms.com/>

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bradgessler
SMS prices vary so much depending on the quality of service you want. At Poll
Everywhere we pay a premium to SMS aggregators to have a short code (99503)
and higher priority connections to cell networks. You could tap into the SMS
network entirely via email, but the latency is too high for our needs.

The situation is awful, and paints a nasty picture of what the web would look
like if it were not for net neutrality.

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petesalty
Apart from a nicer website, how is this service any different from Mobivity,
or half a dozen others? Maybe it's substantially cheaper but I can't seem to
find any pricing information.

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dimitry
This is an API, not an application. In other words, if you want the end-user
to get an SMS reply, you have to write code and instruct the API to send a
message.

Mobivity gives you simple marketing tools (voting, pre-defined messages to
reply with, etc.).

~~~
petesalty
Actually, no, Mobivity give you an API to send and receive SMS messages, and
they do it in pretty much the same way this site does. I know this because
I've used them to do exactly that. I know it does the the marketing as well
but it has a fully fledged SMS api too.

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psyklic
What if someone decides to spam you? Is there any way to enact daily limits or
to block numbers?

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pieter
Too bad they don't list any real pricing information. Also, what about non-US
customers?

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dimitry
US-only for now. We'll edit the frontpage to include more information. Thanks.

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fjabre
Definitely cool but it would get expensive quickly.

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cschep
aren't there email addresses for every common vendor?

yournumber@att.net

or something like that?

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jackowayed
yeah, they exist, and you can google for a list easily, BUT there's issues.

For one, you have to know the carrier (or I guess send the email to all of
them, but I could see that getting you blacklisted or something). Also, I
think I've heard that they're less reliable and can get slow when a lot of
people are sending to them.

Also, I'm pretty sure you'd have to use something if you want a shortcode.
Having them put in an email address, though it would work, is kind of ugly.

