#1 and #3 on the Google search were both a bit vague, mentioning only a fixed rate monthly charge of £5 and £7.50 per month for a number to receive messages on.
They didn't mention whether they charge per message received, but every other price is unambiguous so I'd probably read it as them not charging for receipt of messages beyond the line rental but for the sake of argument didn't want to jump to that conclusion.
The Twilio price is good though, I was finding outbound rates closer to 4p per SMS and only dropping down to 2p per SMS with serious quantity paid in advance.
The UK based sms service I use doesn't. But theres a monthly fee for the number. I'm sure this was the case with others when I was shopping around as well (again, UK based).
At Twilio are focused on creating a platform that enables developers to build value-added applications for their customers. To this end, we have never offered a product that allows developers to send out messages without a number to receive replies. We believe two-way messaging offers our developers the ability to create unique application experiences and has real value to our developer community. As such, we choose to be agressive with cheap outbound pricing and charge for incoming messages.
This is our first foray in to SMS outside of North America though so please send me feedback on your thoughts at patrick [at] twilio
The 2nd on my Google search is http://www.textover.com/incomingsms.html which states:
#1 and #3 on the Google search were both a bit vague, mentioning only a fixed rate monthly charge of £5 and £7.50 per month for a number to receive messages on.They didn't mention whether they charge per message received, but every other price is unambiguous so I'd probably read it as them not charging for receipt of messages beyond the line rental but for the sake of argument didn't want to jump to that conclusion.
The Twilio price is good though, I was finding outbound rates closer to 4p per SMS and only dropping down to 2p per SMS with serious quantity paid in advance.