Learn By Experience: SMS Gateways

                   In this post I’m going to discuss about the most common question I found in ASP.Net forum. The question is “How to send SMS from my asp.net application?”. This is one of the frequent question I found in my experience with ASP.Net forum. 

                   Earlier I also, asked that kind of question. So here I’m going to give a detailed explanation.

                Below are my real time experiences. Recently I got these experience when I develop my own website. Sending SMS from web application (or desktop) application is an easy task only. If you want to sent SMS first you need a SMS Gateway account. In order to buy an SMS Gateway account there are number of SMS Gateway providers available in the market.

                Basically I’m from India, I also bought an SMS account from mvaayoo.com for my website. So here mvaayoo act as a SMS Gateway provider. If you want to create an account, you just go and create one on their website. Initially you will get 10 free SMS credits.

             This is not an issue. But the real problem hit me, when I want to deliver the SMS at an instant. That is say for example, after the registration you want to send verification code to the user thru SMS. Here time is  very essential.

Normally, SMS Gateway providers offer 2 types of SMS services.  They are:

1.   Promotional Route SMS
2.     Transactional Route SMS

There are huge difference between the above 2 types. 

Promotional route SMS had the below qualities:

1. Delivery is NOT guaranteed. Not Suitable for the above scenario.
2.  Do not send SMS to the DND (Do Not Disturb) Numbers
3.  Suitable for Telemarketers
4.  Delivery also allowed with in a time period (that is from 6 AM To 9 PM). SMS that are sent before 6 AM or after 9 PM will not be delivered

1. Transactional route SMS offers the below advantages:
2.      Suitable for time intensive operations (Suitable for the above scenario)
3.      Delivery guaranteed
4.      User can send predefined template messages to any mobile numbers(including DND numbers)

            So for my website I purchased Transactional route SMS. In this route,  your message template format is predefined and approved by the SMS service providers (here mvaayoo.com). In order to get transactional route, user need to fill and signup some kind of legal documents that’s all.

           Normally when a user create an account with SMS service provider web site means they are eligible for Promotional SMS alone.

When log in your account (here mvaayoo.com) you will get the API code for various server side languages like PHP, ASP.net, JSP etc. In order to send SMS, you just copy and insert that code snippet wherever you want within your application.

           Beware when choose an SMS gateway provider. I also had a bitter experience in this. Based on your need select the providers (such that do you want to send international SMSs? Or time critical SMSs? etc)

           If you google, you can get punch of SMS gateways.Above are my personal experiences with SMS Service Providers. 

            Hope this helps to someone who want to develop such kind of applications.

Had any suggestion or points in your mind, throw them as comments.