Hello Folks,
I just wanted to share with everyone the absolute cheapest way I've found to send and receive SMS that can be easily tied into your existing mobile sites and apps using a very simple RESTful API.
Everyone's been talking about and recommending Twilio, which allows you to send and receive SMS in the US for just 1 cent per SMS (sent or received) with pay-as-you-go pricing. They also offer other features such as Phone calls which can prove useful depending on your app or site.
However, if you only need SMS, I've found and tried one that's even cheaper than Twilio and works just as well. It's called Nexmo and they charge you just $0.007 per SMS you send, which is 30% cheaper than Twilio. On top of that, they do NOT charge you to receive SMS, which is a huge advantage over Twilio. You need to have your own number to send and receive SMS, but it costs less than $1 a month per number.
The only disadvantage of Nexmo that I could find compared to Twilio is that although both limit you to sending 1 SMS per second per number (in the US), Twilio will queue any messages over that rate and then send them automatically, whereas Nexmo cancels any that are over that rate, which forces you to manage the send rate.
But at a 30% savings and free-to-receive, it's a no-brainer.
If this sounds like a sales pitch, that's because it sort of is (even though I have no affiliation with them). I'm using them on Dating.mobi and I want to give them some publicity to ensure they don't go out of business or that will force me to have to switch providers. I can't imagine how low their margins are if they're undercutting Twilio by 30% and allow you to receive SMS for free, so I want to make sure more people find out about them because their service is genuinely awesome and lightning fast. I was always planning on using Zeep Mobile as a free ad-supported SMS solution but they went out of business and I don't want the same thing to happen with Nexmo while all the attention is focused on Twilio.
Hope this helps anyone looking for a cheap and simple way to integrate SMS services on your site.
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