This is probably on the borderline of being a programming question, but this is really about technology choice at the end of the day.
I am trying to work out what functionality the system should support in the USA, distributing receipt notifications for payments via email and SMS, regarding SMS opt-out. Is it mandatory that for transactional SMSs the user should be able to 'unsubscribe from all communications'? To stress: this is ONLY transactional SMSs (receipts)
Twilio developer evangelist here.
If you're considering this because you are building a service using Twilio, then you need not worry about building this functionality. Twilio handles opt out messages for you.
If you are only delivering transactional SMS messages and think that opt outs should not apply, I encourage you to get in touch with Twilio support to discuss this in more detail.
Related
I m building a web application with spring boot. Its kind of ecommerce site. I want to send sms text message to users mobile and email message to user email.
Is there any free Apis available for it or any technical solution for it. I need This feature in india..
Thanks in advance...
There are providers for sending SMS like https://www.twilio.com/sms. It has a Rest-API. My experience from a couple of years ago is that sending a considerable amount of SMS costs money, but it is possible that free offers exist today.
Sending emails can be done with an ordinary SMTP-server. You can manage one on your own or use one of a provider. Spring has a high-level API for sending emails: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/mail.html.
I am php developer and for our project (mobile website developed using JQM) we need following functionality,
We need to send SMS to the customer and when customer reads the SMS we need to get the receipt in our site so we can store in database.
I have checked different SMS service api such as ,
Nexmo,plivo,tropo,Twilio,textlocal,clockworksms
Most of them providing facility of the Delivery Receipts such as "delivered/undelivered/QUEUED/ACCEPTD" which denotes delivery status but we want weather SMS is read.
Is this possible in mobile website?
I have checked some reference which gives idea about doing it with andriod app.
http://mobiforge.com/design-development/sms-messaging-android
Thanks.
I have worked with several of the SMS gateway APIs you mention and talked to a number of SMS service providers over 2+ years. The answer to your questions is: No, there is no such thing as a read receipt for SMS in general -- to the very best of my knowledge.
The API delivery status is all you get. And even that status is not 100% reliable. Text messages usually go over a number of hubs to reach their target and service quality and response reliability depend on these.
If you want to make sure the user received your message, you need to have them respond either on you website (with some code you supplied) or by responding to your SMS (in which case you would have to send your message from your own inbound number).
You can get a more definite answer when you do payments via SMS. In this case, there will be multi-step protocols involved that ensure completion of the entire messaging process.
I am looking for a Paid, Premium service that will allow me to RELIABLY send transactional SMS-es INTERNATIONALLY. Not only to the United States and Canada, but to all over the world. I've been looking around but have had no success finding one. Does anyone know of a platform? I've seen Twilio, but do not think they send International.
I am NOT looking for a bulk spamming service. My need is to send sing up verification codes, password requests, online account notifications and such.
Will appreciate any leads.
I am using twilio for last two years and my experience is amazing.
Check this out
http://www.twilio.com/international-sms
I've found Twilio and Tropo so far as services to aid SMS and Voice apps.
Are there others?
I am interested mostly in real-time speech recognition (i.e. the user can speak things and the system can respond based on that).
Also, if anyone knows what the speech recognition quality is like, it'd help!
For reliable SMS delivery we tested Tropo and Twilio and Twilio won hands down... Better API imo (including callbacks that make things like knowing how long a call lasted trivially easy), they manage the sending rate so you don't have to (Tropo discards SMS messages if you send too fast).
On the other hand, Tropo has speech recognition that works very well (although not as well on real-world cell calls in less than silent environments) and has integrated Twitter support.
Both offer excellent support. Tropo is free for development, but Twilio is so inexpensive that's probably a non issue.
My more detailed writeup is at http://pardner.com/2011/04/tropo-not-ready-for-prime-time-went-with-twilio/
(Since the blog was written I've learned Tropo fixed Twitter support, so that's actually a very cool feature in favor of Tropo. Turns out you can mix n match, our app uses BOTH.)
For speech recognition and an API-based telephony service, Tropo's about the only option. If you drop the speech reco requirement CloudVox (hosted asterisk apps) could be a possibility. Or you could install Asterisk yourself and use something like Adhearsion to develop your apps.
If you want to expand your scope beyond cloud telephony APIs, then you could take a look at VoiceXML, a W3C standard for building telephony apps. VoiceXML hosts generally support speech recognition. A search for "VoiceXML Hosting" will turn up several thousand options.
In the interest of disclosure, I'm one of the guys behind Tropo and we're a product from Voxeo, the largest VoiceXML host.
I am reevaluating vendors that provide Voice, SMS, and Email broadcast services. It seems that most of the more reputable names out there (Twilio, Plivo, TelAPI) only offer SMS and Voice capabilities, not Email. SimplyCast is one of the few vendors that seem to provide all three.
Any recommendations on vendors that provide Email/Voice/SMS and the following capabilities through an API?
Submitting and reporting on broadcasts
Create Email broadcasts with attachments
Email templates for customized messages
Submit voice recordings (mp3 preferred) for voice broadcasts
SMS broadcast creation
Reliable uptime and support
Do all cell companies have open APIs that allow you to send SMS messages like Twitter does?
Do you have to pay to do this?
Many (most?) mobile companies have email gateways allowing you to send an SMS. For AT&T I believe it's phonenumber#text.att.net, but each provider will have a different address.
This wikipedia article summaries it pretty well. Some cell companies have easy formats. For example, Verizon uses number#vtext.com.
It depends what country you're in.
In the UK to pay to send - receiving is free.
Take a look at messagepub. They provide an easy API so that you can send SMS messages from your application.
If you want a reliable solution then yes you will have to pay for it, there are some limited free versions.
We used Clickatell with an earlier project http://www.clickatell.com/developers.php
It gets a bit more complicated. E-mail gateways may work for some carriers, but not others. As noted, it's based on your cell carrier, what we can the aggregator, and possibly a third-party "intercarrier". However, it also depends on volume. If you're just sending the occasional SMS via e-mail, it certainly can work, but, it's occasional in use, and you don't get the confirmations that your phone normally sees. For volume transfers of messages, you typically need to talk to your carrier about access to their "SMSC gateway". The SMSC gateway speaks an internet protocol (SMPP) to transfer messages from your app, into the carrier clouds. It it designed for volume, and you get response codes for your messages.