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TextBelt is a free API for outgoing SMS

54 points| typpo | 14 years ago |textbelt.com | reply

27 comments

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[+] kennywinker|14 years ago|reply
Neat, but the user experience is somewhat lacking on my carrier.

    curl http://textbelt.com/text -d number=<my phone number> -d "message=Yo momma!"
SMS from my carrier (305 000 01):

    You have mail from [email protected]. Please reply with 'Read' to read your message.
After replying "read":

    [email protected]() Yo momma!
Message came through, but with a fair bit of cruft.
[+] krelian|14 years ago|reply
Also cost you a couple of cents I assume.
[+] omarchowdhury|14 years ago|reply
What API is available to lookup what carrier a phone is registered with?
[+] dsl|14 years ago|reply
Are you doing LRN lookups to handle ported numbers?
[+] alpb|14 years ago|reply
Nexmo offers 2 Euros for trial accounts (which you can sign up for unlimitedly). Let's say I'll use this get notified if my blog is under heavy traffic load every 5 minutes, how can I rely on it that it won't get shut down tomorrow? Who are behind this and why are they offering this service? Just a github-generated project page does not seem reliable to me.
[+] typpo|14 years ago|reply
If you're just making this for yourself, you might be better off emailing your provider's email-to-SMS gateway rather than using a service like this.
[+] tjoff|14 years ago|reply
Just email it to yourself? Long before apple invented email you have been able to check mail on pretty much any phone made in the last 7 years? (or more?)
[+] mskierkowski|14 years ago|reply
Cool (free, easy). Where are you going with this?

I wrote an app that does almost the same thing through the UI (not API) http://textfrom.me/ but it's not free. I made that project because I needed to txt a group of folks at a specific time in bulk.

[+] kevinprince|14 years ago|reply
So this doesn't work for any of the UK carriers you list as the api cant handle UK MSISDN's. I am assuming your not doing submit SM to an SMSC and are abusing the email to text apis?
[+] corin_|14 years ago|reply
> We support the following U.S. providers:

No mention of UK support, it's American only.

[+] Shank|14 years ago|reply
I assume this works via emailing the carriers (e.g. [email protected]),. If so, why not just release the source (or is that somewhere else?) over running your own service?
[+] mp3jeep01|14 years ago|reply
It looks like that's how they're doing it since they have the caveat of "may receive messages from [email protected]" As for the open source comment -- they're probably running a carrier lookup on the numbers via another API on the back-end, so that dependency on another service doesn't make it as straightforward as just open sourcing it.
[+] usmanghani|14 years ago|reply
What API is available to lookup what carrier a phone is registered with?
[+] xtrimsky_|14 years ago|reply
How about google voice ?
[+] amper5and|14 years ago|reply
+1 for GV. What's cool is that there are libraries in many languages to allow you to use it in creative ways:

* java: http://code.google.com/p/google-voice-java/

* C++: https://github.com/mastermind202/GoogleVoice

* C#: http://code.google.com/p/sharp-voice/

* obj-C: https://bitbucket.org/joeygibson/gvoice/wiki/Home

* Python: http://code.google.com/p/pygooglevoice/

* PHP: http://code.google.com/p/phpgooglevoice/

* javascript (node.js): https://github.com/amper5and/node-google-voice

I dont know how many of those are still maintained. Disclaimer: I am the author of node-google-voice, which is still maintained.

[+] xtrimsky_|14 years ago|reply
I use google voice for everything, I find it important to be able to receive text messages on my Google Voice account. (I don't have a text messaging plan)