Ever wondered how websites that let you send free sms work? This article explains how these "send free sms" websites work and tells you what to look out for if you want to build your own free sms website.
This is the first part of our 5-part cookbook series which shows you everything you need to know to build your own sms sending website.
The second part of this cookbook 2 shows you which operators provide free SMS gateways and how you can use this to build your own "send free sms" website.
The third part of this cookbook 3 explains some techniques that you can use to improve the success of sending SMS using email to SMS gateways.
Everyone wants free sms sending scripts - why?
If you take a quick look at any of the webmaster forums you will see that there are a lot of people interested in running free SMS websites. I regularly see requests for 'sms sending scripts'. So why all this interest?
Its simple - a huge amount of people are searching the Internet for sites where they can send free sms. If you build a site offering free sms then you will get a lot of eyeballs. Just have a look at Google Trends 4 and you see that more people search for free SMS than free email. Also the trend indicate that a lot of these searches are coming from developing countries such as India, Pakistan, etc.
So if you build a website offering free SMS and manage to use some clever SEO tricks then you will get a huge amount of traffic. Stick some advertising on the site and you could get a nice little revenue stream from it.
Warning - dont pay through your nose
If you get only one thing out of this article I hope that I convince you to never, never pay loads of your hard earned cash for a free SMS sending script. There are loads of unscrupulous people out there that try to mystify the whole process of send free SMS. They want you to believe its hard and takes a lot of work to make such a script. Well I just want to debunk that whole mis truth!! Its very easy to create a website for sending free SMS. This article will show you how.
Fundamentals behind sending free SMS
Most scripts that promise to send free SMS actually use the same simple method behind the scenes. They simply send an email to a gateway provided by a phone company. Some (but not all) phone companies have whats called an email to SMS gateway and they provide this to allow people to send an email that gets translated into an SMS and sent to one of their subscribers.
Yes - its that simple. All you need is a script that can send an email to an email address. OK - theres a few little details but more on those later.
I just wanted to point out that there are a lot of reputable SMS sending websites and script writers that use other more reliable of delivering SMS. I am not in any way criticizing them. What I am criticizing is anyone who tries to sell you a simple script that sends free SMS using the phone companies email to sms gateways and want you to pay big money.
The method sounds good - whats the catch?
Yeah - sounds great. Free SMS and all you have to do is send an email to an email address. Too easy! Well its easy but its not a very reliable method of delivering SMS. There are 3 reasons why I dont like this method:
Limited Phone Company Support
Not all phone companies in the world provide an email to sms gateway. Some in the US do. And India also. But there are not a lot of phone companies in other countries that provide the gateways. Therefore, you cant deliver to every country
Knowing the destination carrier
The second reason I dont like this method is because the sender of the SMS needs to know the destination carrier. Yeah - like I'd know for sure what carrier my friend is on. Who asks their friends regular if they have changed carriers and with number portability people can change carriers and keep their numbers.
Receiver not allowed to receive
The last reason I dont like this method is because, in most cases, the receives needs to make a request to his phone company before he/she is allowed received SMS via the phone company email to sms gateway. If you think about it, this is only fair because in some countries the receiver actually gets charged for receiving SMS.
How can I tell if a script uses this simple method?
Its very easy to tell if a website (or script) uses this the simple mechanism of sending an email to phone company gateway. All you need to do is look for sites that ask you to select the destination carrier.
Any website that uses other reliable delivery mechanisms will not ask you to enter the destination carrier. They wont need the destination carrier as they be sending their SMS via proper connectivity to the carriers rather than using the email to sms gateways provided by some phone companies.
How can I use this simple method?
So you have heard me talk about the disadvantages of using the free email gateway mechanism but maybe you still want to know how to create a website to do this. Thats OK. I'll be explaining over the next few posts how to create your own free sms sending website. The next post of the 5 part cookbook will outline how to use the phone companies email to sms gateways.
