Hi,

We're e-mail service providers with more than 170,000 account
worldwide, and we are currently invistigating the validity of having
SMS notifier system to e-mail our users whenever specific type of
e-mails arrive to their accounts.

I estimate our need to be about 20,000 credits/month, so I wanna get
an offer for $0.01/credit.

Any guidance?

Hi abdo,

  Good day and thanks for your question. Sending SMS alerts to users
when an e-mail arrives is definitely an asset for your e-mail service.
I use the service on Yahoo mail.

  The first thing you should do is to find out if the user's cellular
provider has a gateway. e.g. In Chennai (India), Airtel, one of the
cellular providers has an e-mail to SMS gateway with the number of the
form 9840xxxxxx@airtelchennai.com. This is the way I receive my
alerts. This won't cost you anything.

  Assuming the cellular operator doesn't have an e-mail to SMS
gateway, you will have to either :
(1) Set up your own SMS gateway
(2) Go through a third party gateway

I will explore option (2), which is your initial question.

You are looking for gateways that charge 1 cent per credit. However,
such gateways do not exist. Even if they do, they won't be reliable
and the last thing you want is your customer is to complain that they
aren't receiving messages. The cheapest you could get is probably 2.2
cents, but only if you buy 50,000,000 credits. SMS Driver offers this
http://www.smsdriver.com/prices.htm

Lucin is one such party that gives such services. Sending an SMS uses
1 credit, sending logos & ringtones takes 7 credits. They charge 5.9
cents per credit for individuals. However, they have mentioned that
for bulk booking of credits (greater than 2000), you can e-mail them
at bulksms@lucin.com with details about your organization and expected
use.
You get 10 free credits on registration (which you can use to check it
out). Their URL is :
http://www.soapengine.com/lucin/soapenginex/smsx.asmx

SMS Italy is another site that offers use of their SMS gateway. Costs
around 3 to 4 cents per SMS.
http://www.smsitaly.com/eng/prices.asp

Clickatell charges around 3 to 4 cents per SMS (depending on
quantity). Initial setup is free.
http://www.clickatell.com/brochure/products/business_solutions.php

Bulksms allows you to send an SMS for 3.21 cents per SMS
Tel (Work): +27 (0)21 409 7063 (for overseas clients only)
Fax : +27 (0)21 409 7064
Cell: +27 (0) 82 887 2376
E-Mail: service@bulksms.com
Postal address: PO Box 1263, Milnerton, 7435, South Africa
Physical address: Olivetti House, 17 Lower Long Street, Cape Town,
8000

I hope this answers your question. If you have any clarifications,
then please don't hesitate to ask.

Good day and thanks for using this service.

Warm Regards,
aditya2k

I'm guessing you are a US company, and the commercial landscape may
well be different compared to here in Europe.

However, generally the ingress charge for an SMS into a mobile carrier
is at a minimum $0.03. This is because of the interconnect rate the
carrier will pay to foward the message onto a user on another network.
In principle a carrier may offer a lower rate if you limit the service
to people on that network, although 1 cent is probably about the cost
of trunking the message through the network, so is still very low for
a commercial long term rate.

For many years the cheapest SMS operator in Europe was Swisscom, based
in Switzerland, so you could try them.

Alternatively you could try to offset the 3 cent cost in other ways,
for example:

- Adding a (short!) marketing message to the bottom of each SMS which
you can then charge advertisers for

- Charging the users for the service - if the email alerts are of
importance then users may be prepared to pay to receive them. The
neatest way to do this is via a billed mobile-terminated SMS (a
message that the user pays to receive), although to do this you will
need to sign up with each network that your users are on.
Alternatively you could get users to pay upfront - perhaps $5 for a
year's free SMS alerts, for example.

- Sending the message as a WAP push message. If the message contained
a URL which the user could then click on to read the full text of the
mail via their phone, you may be able to pursuade a network operator
to give you a better ingress rate on the basis that you are generating
additional data traffic for them. You'd have to work had to convince
them of this, though...

If you're based in the US, I recommend using Simplewire
(www.simplewire.com). You can Purchase SMS in bulk and pay 3.8 Cents a
message. The advantage is that being in the US they are easy to
contact for customer support if you need help with anything and
secondly they have a whole host of features if you wanted to expand
your Mobile services at a later date.