you may contact Wes from PageMail http://www.page.ca/index.html
Wes, maybe you can explain what SMS services you offers to Bruce and Ehsan On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 5:58 PM, Ehsan Elahi Malik <[email protected] > wrote: > We are just about to give up on Clickatell (Clickatell.com) after a > horrible > experience. I would strongly suggest to stay away from Clickatell > especially > for two way SMS. > > We had a requirement to send bulk SMS around (mostly US). As we wanted to > send SMSs on per transaction to every user and to let them opt-out and get > help. Clickatell convinced one of our directors that having our own > short-code was the only way to do this as we signed up with Clickatell back > in Octorber. It took about 20 days for them to setup our account properly > so > we can do all testing and complete API development on our side to use their > APIs. Our development was done in early December hoping to get the service > going before Christmas. It was a painful experience to get our short code > approved through them with carriers. Took a few 100 emails and some dozen > phone calls before we finally got it done just after first week of April. > For all the complicated rules they apply for the shortcode, you are allowed > to 60 characters of your own and rest 100 characters go in the name of > regulations (some of them only Clickatell is willing to enforce). > > They charged 1000s of dollars (more than 10k) for this shortcode approval > process; promised to get it working before Christmas (20 days) and it took > them about 5 months. And guess what? They are charging us for the short > code > rental since December. Refund? No way.. they think it is absolutely right > as > they got the shortcode reserved for us since then though they could not > make > it work. > > We send about 10-15k messages per day and about 70-80% of these messages > fail every day. You guessed it... they charge us for all of those > undelivered/failed messages and again they think that it is absolutely > alright to charge us for every message once handed over to their system > even > though their system was not able to deliver it. > > Make sure to have a look at their supported carriers list (link can be > found > somewhere in the fine print) as they can deliver messages to only those. > Carriers like MetroPCS (a major carrier in US east coast) are not > supported. > So if you send a message to numbers belonging to MetroPCS it won't be > delivered but of course we are being charged for it. > > Many carriers in US do not offer free incoming messages or at least most of > their plans do not include it so a big number of people have their carrier > to block incoming messages to avoid charges. If you send messages to those > your message will not be delivered but you will be charged for these > messages. > > They don't have a method of properly notifying that why a message was not > delivered. Their API will just notify that a message was not delivered. You > can give individual numbers to their support to investigate and they will > normally come back to you within 5 business days (normally 5th) to tell you > that message was not delivered as mobile subscriber has disabled incoming > messages (or similar reason). There is no automated way... imagine > manually > investigating 10,000 numbers per day. Don't forget that you will still be > charged for all these messages. > > There is no way to find out the carrier for a particular number before you > try to send a message. Well not even after you have sent the message and > paid for the failure still there is no automated way of known the carrier > so > you can mark the number for future. You login to their interface and see > the > log to findout the carrier. > > You are charged for every delivered/undelivered message you try to send. > Thankfully they don't charge you for messages to landline. So we pay for > about 10,000 messages every day even though about 2,000 of them are > delivered and rest 70-80% are not delivered to all kind of reasons. > > The time I took to write this long email is nothing compare to the time we > wasted with clickatell > > We just signed up for a trial account with Trumpia (trumpia.com) and > probably some others. Will let you know about our experience as we go > ahead. > > Regards, > > Ehsan Malik > > -----Original Message----- > From: Claudius - Asterisk DL [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: April-14-11 8:47 PM > To: Bruce N; asterisk Mailing > Subject: RE: [on-asterisk] Bulk SMS provider? > > Clickatell.com > > I've have been using them for 5+ years now ... at times even cheaper than > my > CDN cell provider. And yes, they allow SenderID be set > > -----Original Message----- > From: Bruce N [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: April-14-11 7:43 PM > To: asterisk Mailing > Subject: [on-asterisk] Bulk SMS provider? > > > Hi Everyone, > > > Does anyone have any recommendations for an international SMS provider > which > allows Sender ID setting? > > > Regards, > Bruce > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > -- Thank you Patrick Song CCIE #28023, CCVP M.Eng in Telecommunications Cell:1-647-868-2950
