Hi Daniel, (as a full disclosure up front: I built SMS service of aerostatus.com, so whatever I say below - will be in the context of that project, YMMV depending on your project's specifics and targets)
At different phases of the project we were looking at and using a number of sms gateways, and as a quick summary - these are my current findings of this area: 1. Depending on where you can place your server - the cheapest way to start might be with a GSM modem connected to a laptop. That was our MVP, running from home with a SIM card on unlimited SMS plan. There's a plenty of SMS gateways available for that setup, from plug-n-play NowSMS for Windows, to Kannel on Linux. Cons - limited speed of message processing (approx 10 SMS per minute at that time), network link must be reliable to guarantee uptime. 2. We attempted to negotiate some agreements directly with mobile service providers, but it turned up to be less than fruitful - they're (understandably) not interested in talking to the small guys, so unless you're going to send hundreds of thousands of messages per month - talking to the resellers will give you a much better result (in terms of both contracts and prices). It wasn't in Australia, though, but given we had the same experience in a number of countries across the globe - I guess it's the same everywhere, and it generally makes sense. 3. The best way to minimise the price of a message is to get a number of uplinks to resellers/gateways in different countries. Prices vary wildly, and as we don't care about latency and how many hops there are between our server and a reseller - identifying you primary destinations and choosing a reseller with low prices for that destination gives a certain edge. Also - talk to their sales and push for a discount, you can often get high-volume discounts without actually committing for high-volume packages. 4. Numbers provisioning is usually the hardest part, if you aren't happy with the default options. Generally resellers have a set of numbers ready to go, letting you choose one of those, or if you want something of your own - you can send in your SIM card/etc. Still it's definitely not realtime, and has to be taken care of as needed. Mind, though - we never really had a need for real-time provisioning of numbers, so there might be something better, but I'd expect it to be more expensive. 5. Ruby support - doesn't matter. All resellers and gateways I worked with provide some kind of HTTP interface, so the integration is a breeze. Mobile operators, though, are a different story - SNMP is the rule there, with a number of more messaging-specific protocols also thrown in. Might be a pain to integration with, but thankfully - we didn't have to. I can't really give you any specific recommendations/contacts without knowing your target countries first, but if you want to discuss things in more details - feel free to get in touch off the list, I'd be happy to share the experience. On Saturday, August 25, 2012 7:06:35 AM UTC+10, Daniel May wrote: > > (cross-posted on Silicon Beach Australia, apologies if you get duplicates) > > Hi, > > Starting to build an MVP. > Need to use an interactive SMS gateway/service where: > > - My back-end can send/receive/process SMS through the gateway > - Numbers can be easily provisioned (international numbers would be > good) > - Ruby support is ideal > > There's stuff out there but wanted to leverage your concrete experience :) > And low cost is also good :) > > Much thanks, > Daniel > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rails-oceania/-/Fy1OhjlXVooJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
