Four ways to send a SMS (a mobile text)

We're hard at work on a lot of work in regard to mobile texting and and mobile apps (funded in part by the Research Fund... and all of you who donated to it! Thanks you!). I've learned a lot, but among them: the world of SMS (meaning "Short Message Service", the official name for a text message) is a darn complicated one.

As we at Idealware like to break things down, we've broken down the ways to send a text into four categories.

• SMS as email. It's usually possible to send people a text message simply by emailing it to an email address consisting of their phone number and then their provider's domain (i.e. 6463523431@att.net). This is not actually officially supported, and can lead to problems when doing it in quantity, but can be an easy method for a few quick (or internal) texts. You also have the problem of collecting providers and provider domains, which is a kind of unusual thing to ask supporters for. But it's free.

• Connecting your phone to your computer. There are software packages -- like Frontline SMS or Microsoft SMS -- which allow you to literally hook your cell phone to your computer and send a bunch of messages out through your own cell phone. This is more common (for reasons we're still investigating) in third world countries than in the US. The software is inexpensive.

• SMS via programmatic services. If you have a programmer, you can use services like Click-a-Tell that allow you to send messages by communicating via API. For instance, Click-a-Tell is often used in conjunction with Drupal for either one way broadcast texting, or more sophisticated processes like letting people sign up via texting, or providing dynamic info (like the weather). Click-a-Tell is priced by the message, averaging about $0.04/ message. There's also open source software like Kannel and Gammu which we think falls into this category.
  

• SMS in a box. Finally, there are vendors like Mobile Commons and Distributive Networks who provide you a nice packaged service, and an interface, very much like a broadcast email interface, that lets non-technical people easily set up texting streams -- to let people signup via text, broadcast texts, setup complex two-way interactions, or donate. We're investigating pricing, but they're not cheap. Perhaps starting at $200- $500/month?

So as you can tell, we've still got a ways to go on our research -- would love to hear your thoughts (either via comment below, or via email) if you can fill in any of our blanks or if you think we've gotten this wrong.