We often get queries on alternate ways of sending an SMS from our product. Currently it is possible only if your ISP supports sending you an sms via email.
I just happened to evaluate an easy to use email to SMS service. The service can be found at www.clickatell.com. The cost of sending an SMS depends on your country and service provider. Eg: for the US it could cost you around 5 cents per SMS sent while its lesser in countries like India. The pricing looks good for the value added.
We tried our product with this servce and it looks like a potential candidate to be used by our customers too. Here is what you need to do :
1) Register with www.clickatell.com. Buy some credits or use the free credits for testing.
2) You will get an api id, user name, password etc.
3) Now go to Applications Manager, select the ‘New Action’ > SMS Action.
4) In the text area provided, enter the below lines of text:
api_id:yourid
User:yourusername
password:yourpassword#
to:<enter your mobile number with country code, eg: 9198499999911>
text: $RCAMESSAGE
The $RCAMESSAGE is a tag that will ensure that you will get a relevant message from App Manager in the SMS.
The SMS action should be addressed to sms@messaging.clickatell.com email id.
5) That’s it ! Test it by clicking the ‘Execute’ icon in the ‘View Actions’ screen and you should get it before you finish counting till 15 🙂
Well the only glitch I have seen is that ‘the time the sms was received’ shown on my mobile is 3 hours back ! That’s probably because the sms is sent from a server in South Africa, but I am happy that I got the SMS in 15 seconds from when the alert was generated.
Hope you find it useful.
