[moe]

So it seems you're using a bunch of GSM-modems with SIM-cards on "sms flatrate" contracts. Apart from the obvious scalability concerns I really wonder whether (or rather: for how long) the carriers will let you get away with that?

[stirman]

No, we went down the GSM modem path a while back with ohdontforget.com. Not scalable, affordable, or customizable :)

[moe]

Then how do you realize the low rate?

It's so much lower than what even the high volume gateways can afford that you're obviously not working on regular contracts.

Abusing their E-Mail/Web interfaces?

Sorry for coming across negative but I'm very wary about the reliablity here.

SMS sending is most often used for some sort of user-validation and usually during a critical phase of the conversion process (signup, transaction checkout etc.). Reliability is crucial at that point, which is why most SMS gateways offer fairly strict SLAs.

Do you provide any kind of guarantee that my penny transaction will result in an actual delivery? I'm asking because random hit & miss or "sorry, the t-mobile web sender was acting funny the other day" doesn't bring my lost customers back.

[stirman]

All valid concerns, and I'll tell you that we take reliability very seriously. We have been in business, as ohdontforget.com, for over 4 years, and have learned a lot in that time.

We are not abusing e-mail or web interfaces. We spent months getting contracts set up so we could access the same data that major cell carriers use to route their text messages.

For one cent a message, give it a try, I think your concerns will be remedied :)

[moe]

Okay, thanks for the insight. Although I'm still wondering what volumes of messages you are pushing to get a 1cent/message rate. Last time I checked even large scale contracts (>10k messages/day) would be billed at least five times that amount. Plus fixed fees...