Question

I’m working on a web app in ASP.NET that needs to send text messages programmatically. What is the best way to do this? Do I need to know the carrier for each phone number and use each carrier’s email-to-text format (i.e. [e-mail] for Verizon)?

I found this list and some others like it online, but there’s no post date on the article, and I’m leery of using those in production without having tested them first.

Answer 1

For free, yes, you can just send to number@gatewayaddress. This has the unfortunate side effect, though, that all your customers need to input who their carrier is. If they switch carriers they need to switch their carrier in your system, too. Here is a list of SMS gateways on wikipedia.

Other alternatives can be using a pay service. One of them that I’ve used and been happy with so far is twilio. With a service like twilio you can just send a message to a number, and it will find it no matter what carrier they have. In addition, you do have some capabilities for return messages, although I didn’t delve into that too much.

EDIT: One more comment about the SMS Gateways: They will change more than you’d like them to. Everytime someone buys someone they phase something out, or sometimes they just decide on a whim to change them. At least with twilio you’re only on the whim of one company (whose very invested in keeping it the same).