This is mainly a post for myself so I can have all the resources in one area, but hopefully it helps someone else out too.
There are a few ways to send a Text Message to your phone. The most common way is to send an email to your mobile provider. Here’s a list of some of the mobile providers:
T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
Update: 2007-09-12 - I found more email domains for the text messaging sites.
sms.3rivers.net, 3 River Wireless mobile.mycingular.com,Cingular messaging.nextel.com,Nextel tmomail.net,T-Mobile vtext.com,Verizon paging.acswireless.com,ACS Wireles message.alltel.com,Alltel message.alltel.com, Alltel PCS alphanow.net,AlphNow paging.acswireless.com ,Ameritech mobile.att.net,AT& T PCS text.bell.ca,Bell Canada wireless.bellsouth.com,Bell South bellsouth.cl,Bellsouth myboostmobile.com,Boost mobile.celloneusa.com,CellularOne sms.edgewireless.com,Edge Wireless mymetropcs.com,Metro PCS qwestmp.com,Qwest messaging.sprintpcs.com ,Sprint PCS vmobl.com,Virgin Mobile
Where phonenumber = your 10 digit phone number
If you know your company is going to only use ______ carrier, then you can set it up in your system to automatically send emails to the carriers address as listed above.
BUT what if you don’t know the carrier? There are other services out there –
Teleflip allows you to send a text message to anyone that can accept a text message. The caveat here is they reserve the right to sell your email (the from email) and the destination email (the phone# to you which your sending a text message). This service works GREAT, and if you don’t give a damn about letting your email and phone number get out into the wild world of SPAM, then this is the service for you.
How to use:
Send an email to [email protected]
where “phonenumber” is the destination phone number you want to text.
Then include a subject and body in the email and send away. The user will get the text very soon.
TeleFlip reserves the right to advertise in your text messages and reserves the right to keep and read all of your texts. So… be careful what you send. But then again, you should be careful anytime you text something, especially when its business related.
TeleFlip was almost a “slam-dunk” for my applications until I realized they stored all source/destination addresses and reserved the right to sell them. Unfortunately, I think this is going to cost them a lot of business.
WebServiceX.NETWeb Service X provides a service that’s called SendSMSWorld and SendSMSIndia. You can send a lot of messages through this web service. I’ve heard that it works, but I’ve never been able to get it working. I ran into a few issues and the support and contact areas of the site didn’t even work. I received exceptions when I attempted to use them.
Hmmm…. Betsy… this sure doesn’t sound like a place I can trust. Its a good place to keep an eye one just in case they fix everything and it becomes reliable.
Conclusion
I’m aware of a lot of other services out there that send text messages for you but it seems to me the best way to do it is through the carrier. Find the carrier name, and then allow the app to send it to the carrier address. That’s going to be the most reliable method to get texting to work (IMO).
There are other sites out there that allow you to send text messages for free, but they are not web services that you can connect to – txt2day.com and textforfree.net are examples of these. You could use the WebRequest class in .NET (which I’ll be writing about soon) and Fiddler to build an auto submission routine for you, but that’s a royal pain in the arse if you ask me.
So use what works best, but for ease of use, try out the carrier method first.