Can a site send text message to mobile phone?

[kapow]

I am used to making forms with php that create and send an email. Now I have a new problem.

Is it possible to create a facility on a website that will send a text message to a mobile phone?

[werty]

Actually there are lots of sites that have this and I have seen plugins for portals like phpnuke.

What you are looking for is called an SMS script. SMS stands for Short Message Service

A few can be found here:
http*//www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Communication_Tools/

[lorax]

You may also find this [wirelessdevnet.com] worth a read.

While I haven't actually played with this segment of communications I believe the wireless companies are trying to agree on a standard language for communicating with wireless devices. I believe WML (wireless meta-language) is the proposed spec though the only mention of it I can find at W3C are position papers - some of which are listed below.

Additional reading:

[w3.org...]

[w3.org...]

[w3.org...]

[kapow]

an SMS script

That sounds good!

Are you saying all I need is a good script? (like sending email)

Do I need to sign up to some kind of service provider that will send the text message? or will it go from my website (Apache & php).

I am based in the UK. I only need something that will send 5-10 texts per week to different mobile phones.

[werty]

I believe it is just like sending an email.

I know for my provider(US) you get a [e-mail] "email" address and that recieves the messages.

I looked into a bit further and found these:
https*//sourceforge.net/projects/linuxsms/
https*//sourceforge.net/projects/smsj/

and a resource:
http*//tuxmobil.org/phones_linux_sms.html

[kapow]

OK - this is where I really show my ignorance.

I know some mobiles have an email address ([e-mail]) but I think when you want to send a text to most mobiles it just sends to their mobile phone number - I think.

Just sending an email is going to be easy, its sending a text from a website to a mobile number that I need to understand.

[trillianjedi]

Just sending an email is going to be easy, its sending a text from a website to a mobile number that I need to understand.

It's quite easy - look at a few scripts and you'll get the gist of it.

It's not free though, you need to bulk buy messages from an ISP. (Added - I'm talking about the UK here - maybe it's different in the US).

There used to be some ISP's that offered free SMS gateway services, but they tacked their adverts at the beginning of your messages (probably also collected the numbers for spam purposes). Not sure if those kind of services are still available.

TJ

[kapow]

What does it cost?
Who are the relible providers in the UK?

The site will probably only send 5-10 texts per week.

[DrDoc]

SMS and e-mail to a cell phone are two very different things.

SMS isn't fully built out in the US yet

[trillianjedi]

I'll get back to you on that one kapow - need to speak to the guy I did this with and get him to remind me of the people we used (pretty reliable - don't recall it ever not working). Will sticky mail details. Had to bulk buy the messages but they were less than a penny each or so as I recall. I think we've still got about 4000 if you want to buy them! lol

The script to call it was very simple, a CGI as I remember, so you just call something along the lines of the following:-

mySMSwidgetything.com/smsgate.cgi?number=44780123456&message=This is my message text&sender=44877076543

They supplied the CGI. Probably can supply you with an asp/php script or something else now.

The useful thing was the "sender" option - you could make it appear to have come from any mobile phone, or another gateway so that users could "reply" from their phone back to a website script.

TJ

[Christopher C]

Some providers will allow you to send SMS via icq as well. When I was using it I had to pay an extra charge and a per ICQ charge to my cell company.

[rubenski]

I do this in an even simpler way. I send an email from my site to my hotmail address and have configured MSN messenger to send a text message to my phone when an email arrives on that adres. Quite handy. Costs money though and i don't know how much compared to the solutions provided above...

You will of course have to depend on the stability of MSN messenger and your (home) internet connection if you use this solution.

[Brett_Tabke]

Any time WebmasterWorld can't be reached for more than about 5 mins, I get an sms message stating there might be trouble here in nerdvana.

>email?

Right - most mobile phones in the US have sms gateways where you can send sms just as email - thus, folks on Verizon, Sprint and others don't need anything special other than an email script (that's all mine is). [e-mail] is all I have to have to txt msg anyone.

[bzurkovic]

Hi,

Sending SMS text messages is very different from sending email. For one thing, there is always a charge required to terminate a message. The charge can be either for sender (which is how native SMS works) or for receiver (how most of email to SMS gateways work) or even on both ends (how some North American providers implemented the service).

It is in many regards preferable to use SMS to email (SMTP gateways) to deliver SMS text messages. Some of the reasons are:
* It is faster (priority is given to traffic coming from SMS Gateway)
* It is paid by the sender
* It can be used to send to almost all global networks

You can find a solid worldwide coverage and easy integration with any application available from http://www.smsto.net.

Regards,
b

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 2:28 pm (utc) on Dec. 2, 2003]
[edit reason] DeLinked URL [/edit]