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by vampirical
5693 days ago
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I'm always a bit surprised this doesn't some up more often in these discussions. I used to use little serial GSM/GPRS modems anytime I needed to handle SMS, and that was while working for a voip company with lots of infrastructure in place for that kind of thing (the modems always won based on simplicity, speed, and consistency). At the small scale spending $100 or so to have an unlimited test system seems comparable, and for large scale I'd much rather be buying a few unlimited SMS plans than paying per message. If the wireless provider supports SMS over GPRS you can do something like 30/min so you may never need more than one modem and sim. I wonder if it is just the barrier to entry, since you have to know that such a thing is possible and hunt down hardware/software to fit your needs rather than just buying in to one of these companies' pitches. |
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Companies choose to work with an SMS provider because they don't want to have to solve uptime, scale, and service issues themselves.
When you're small, running your company on a web server under your desk connected to your cable modem probably works just fine. Doing the equivalent with SMS might make sense at that stage, too. As you grow, your needs change.
One thing to note is that in the US, "unlimited" plans aren't actually unlimited. Read the fine print on your contracts. Carriers define a limit to the number of messages they consider to be reasonable use. It's a soft limit, so they don't immediately block or ban you for going over once in a while. But if you do it consistently, they'll start to charge for the overage.