Deciding SMS-forwarding client

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

Apart from Twilio, I have the found a list of application providers: http://www.usshortcodes.com/partners/find-a-sms-marketing-partner.php#application-tab
Though it is not mentioned explicitly on their websites that they provide URL-forwarding services. We will have to contact them to confirm this.

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

Should I contact them on Bloomington's behalf?

[Rick Dietz]

I am not really familiar with this market.  I do not recognize most of the companies listed.  The only one I know offhand is twilio.  If there are some that you think we should consider feel free to make a recommendation.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "open311-mobile" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open311-mobil...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to open311...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/open311-mobile.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rick Dietz, Director
Information & Technology Services Dept.
City of Bloomington, Indiana
812.349.3485 (office) 812.340.7958 (cell)
die...@bloomington.in.gov

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

Can you give me a rough estimate of the number of queries we would be handling through SMS in a month?

[Cliff Ingham]

I'm really not sure. We haven't used SMS here in Bloomington before, so
I'm not sure how many people would be interested in using it.

However, I can tell you that we received 158 requests from the iOS and
Android apps combined last month. I'd imagine that the SMS traffic
would be less than that.

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

In that case, if we have serve multiple endpoints, what could the volume we could be serving?

[Rick Dietz]

A city that wishes to deploy the SMS Georeporter gateway would install their own instance.  At least for our purposes in Bloomington there would be one instance per endpoint.

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

If we have one instance per endpoint, then I don't think there is any use for configuration panel as Cliff and I had discussed here because all the configuration could be set through the configuration file itself during setup. Also, having an instance per endpoint is more bug-free.

[Rick Dietz]

You may still want to have a UI for configuration, but it would be simpler for just one endpoint. -

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

Ok, I will do that.

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

I had mailed all of the service providers listed here. Here is a list of SMS forwarding Service Providers which have APIs conforming to our requirements:

1. EzTexting : Pricing: http://www.eztexting.com/pricing/ , API documentation: http://www.eztexting.com/developers/incoming/receive-api.html
They have their own shortcode 313131, on which we will get keyword(s).  This can be a good choice if we don't want to spend upwards of 1000$ per month on having our own shortcode. In fact, a Pro account will provide us with 4 keyword and 5500 messages. These 4 keywords can be setup as the 4 Interaction Modes which will make our application a bit more user friendly. Till 5500 messages, there is no cost for outgoing SMS. All incoming SMS are free, though I have to confirm if it applies to two-way texting as well.

2. Mobile Commons: API documentation: https://secure.mcommons.com/help/mdata . Will have to inquire about pricing by calling them.

Apart from these two, Twilio is also a good choice as discussed before:

Pricing: https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing/us ; API documentation: https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/sms/twilio_request
For working with Twilio, we would have to purchase our own shortcode. The cost for a random shortcode is 1000$ per month and choosing our own shortcode will cost 1500$/month. We will get unlimited keywords on our chosen shortcode. The list of available shortcodes is present here.  There are costs for sending as well as receiving SMS as detailed on their pricing page.

More info about Short Codes here.

[Cliff Ingham]

What can we do for free with these providers? I'm not sure $12,000 per
year is in the realm of possibility. I was thinking the charges would
be the $1 per month for the phone number and $0.01 per SMS

On 07/05/2013 11:08 AM, Abhiroop Bhatnagar wrote:
> I had mailed all of the service providers listed here<http://www.usshortcodes.com/partners/find-a-sms-marketing-partner.php#application-tab>.

> Here is a list of SMS forwarding Service Providers which have APIs
> conforming to our requirements:
>
> 1. EzTexting : Pricing: http://www.eztexting.com/pricing/ , API
> documentation: http://www.eztexting.com/developers/incoming/receive-api.html

> They have their own shortcode *313131*, on which we will get keyword(s).

> This can be a good choice if we don't want to spend upwards of 1000$ per
> month on having our own shortcode. In fact, a Pro account will provide us
> with 4 keyword and 5500 messages. These 4 keywords can be setup as the 4
> Interaction Modes which will make our application a bit more user friendly.
> Till 5500 messages, there is no cost for outgoing SMS. All incoming SMS are
> free, though I have to confirm if it applies to two-way texting as well.
>
> 2. Mobile Commons: API documentation:
> https://secure.mcommons.com/help/mdata . Will have to inquire about pricing
> by calling them.
>
> Apart from these two, Twilio is also a good choice as discussed before:
>
> Pricing: https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing/us ; API documentation:
> https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/sms/twilio_request
> For working with Twilio, we would have to purchase our own shortcode. The
> cost for a random shortcode is 1000$ per month and choosing our own
> shortcode will cost 1500$/month. We will get unlimited keywords on our

> chosen shortcode. The list of available shortcodes is present here<https://www.usshortcodes.com/get-a-sms-short-code/basic-search-for-short-code.php>.

> There are costs for sending as well as receiving SMS as detailed on their
> pricing page.
>

> More info about Short Codes here<https://www.usshortcodes.com/about-sms-short-codes/sms-marketing-faqs.php>
> .
>

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

The closest I think we can get to free would be the 49$/month(600$/year) plan mentioned here: http://www.eztexting.com/pricing/ .

[Rick Dietz]

I'm not sure why we would need a short code and that substantial cost.  We won't have the volume to make that pricing model appealing.  Twilio's pricing is reasonable without short codes.  

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "open311-mobile" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open311-mobil...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to open311...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/open311-mobile.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Cliff Ingham]

I was under the impression that the implementation is relying on using
short codes.

[Rick Dietz]

I don't recall really discussing it, but I could be forgetting something.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "open311-mobile" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open311-mobil...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to open311...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/open311-mobile.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

I was also confused about this so I confirmed it with Twilio sales people.
Twilio allows us to use standard USA ten-digit phone numbers for our purpose with their pricing as follows:
Outgoing SMS: 1 c/SMS
Incoming SMS: 1 c/SMS
Phone Number: 1 $/month
The list of phone numbers available for Bloomington, Indiana:
+1 812-558-3909
+1 812-671-0010
+1 812-558-3743
+1 812-720-9136
+1 812-558-2269
+1 812-558-2268
+1 812-650-4941
+1 812-650-4942
+1 812-650-4974
+1 812-650-4973
+1 812-650-4972

I think this will work well for us. Also, they allow for a trial before buying a number. Apart from the Configuration Panel, the core functionality is complete so if we take the application live, we can have a trial run.

[Rick Dietz]

If we need to snag one of the numbers, let's do +1 812-671-0010 

We should probably do this in a Bloomington account that we can set up instead of one tied personally to you.  Does that make sense?

-R

[Abhiroop Bhatnagar]

Perfectly fine. The registration for a free account requires filling out a form with First Name,Last Name and Email. If you tell me what details to use, I will create the account myself. Otherwise here is the link for it: https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio .