Texting/SMS Your Mobile Phone From .NET (or any other technology)

This is mainly a post for myself so I can have all the resources in one area, but hopefully it helps someone else out too.

There are a few ways to send a Text Message to your phone. The most common way is to send an email to your mobile provider. Here’s a list of some of the mobile providers:

T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com
Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com

Update: 2007-09-12 - I found more email domains for the text messaging sites.

sms.3rivers.net, 3 River Wireless
mobile.mycingular.com,Cingular
messaging.nextel.com,Nextel
tmomail.net,T-Mobile
vtext.com,Verizon
paging.acswireless.com,ACS Wireles
message.alltel.com,Alltel
message.alltel.com, Alltel PCS
alphanow.net,AlphNow
paging.acswireless.com ,Ameritech
mobile.att.net,AT& T PCS
text.bell.ca,Bell Canada
wireless.bellsouth.com,Bell South
bellsouth.cl,Bellsouth
// <![CDATA[
D(["mb","myboostmobile.com\u003c/a\>,Boost\u003cbr\>\u003ca href\u003d\"http://mobile.celloneusa.com\" target\u003d\"_blank\" onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\"\>mobile.celloneusa.com\u003c/a\>,CellularOne\u003cbr\>\u003ca href\u003d\"http://sms.edgewireless.com\" target\u003d\"_blank\" onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\"\>\nsms.edgewireless.com\u003c/a\>,Edge Wireless\u003cbr\>\u003ca href\u003d\"http://mymetropcs.com\" target\u003d\"_blank\" onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\"\>mymetropcs.com\u003c/a\>,Metro PCS\u003cbr\>\u003ca href\u003d\"http://qwestmp.com\" target\u003d\"_blank\" onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\"\>qwestmp.com\u003c/a\>,Qwest\u003cbr\>\u003ca href\u003d\"http://messaging.sprintpcs.com\" target\u003d\"_blank\" onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\"\>messaging.sprintpcs.com\n\u003c/a\>,Sprint PCS\u003cbr\>\u003ca href\u003d\"http://vmobl.com\" target\u003d\"_blank\" onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\"\>vmobl.com\u003c/a\>,Virgin Mobile\u003cbr\>\u003cbr\>\u003cbr\> \u003c/div\>",1]
);
// ]]>myboostmobile.com,Boost
mobile.celloneusa.com,CellularOne
sms.edgewireless.com,Edge Wireless
mymetropcs.com,Metro PCS
qwestmp.com,Qwest
messaging.sprintpcs.com ,Sprint PCS
vmobl.com,Virgin Mobile

Where phonenumber = your 10 digit phone number

If you know your company is going to only use ______ carrier, then you can set it up in your system to automatically send emails to the carriers address as listed above.

BUT what if you don’t know the carrier? There are other services out there –

Teleflip allows you to send a  text message to anyone that can accept a text message. The caveat here is they reserve the right to sell your email (the from email) and the destination email (the phone# to you which your sending a text message). This service works GREAT, and if you don’t give a damn about letting your email and phone number get out into the wild world of SPAM, then this  is the service for  you.

How to use:

Send an email to phonenumber@teleflip.com

where “phonenumber” is the destination phone number you want to text.

Then include a subject and body in the email and send away. The user will get the text very soon.

TeleFlip reserves the right to advertise in your text messages and reserves the right to keep and read all of your texts. So… be careful what you send. But then again, you should be careful anytime  you text something, especially when its business related.

TeleFlip was almost a “slam-dunk” for my applications until I realized they stored all source/destination addresses and reserved the right to sell them. Unfortunately, I think this is going to cost them a lot of business.

WebServiceX.NET

Web Service X provides a service that’s called SendSMSWorld and SendSMSIndia. You can send a lot of messages through this web service. I’ve heard that it works, but I’ve never been able to get it working. I ran into a few issues and the support and contact areas of the site didn’t even work. I received exceptions when I attempted to use them.

Hmmm…. Betsy… this sure doesn’t sound like a place I can trust. Its a good place to keep an eye one just in case they fix everything and it becomes reliable.

Conclusion

I’m aware of a lot of other services out there that send text messages for you but it seems to me the best way to do it is through the carrier. Find the carrier name, and then allow the app to send it to the carrier address. That’s going to be the most reliable method to get texting to work (IMO).

There are other sites out there that allow you to send text messages for free, but they are not web services that you can connect to – txt2day.com and textforfree.net are examples of these. You could use the WebRequest class in .NET (which I’ll be writing about soon) and Fiddler to build an auto submission routine for you, but that’s a royal pain in the arse if you ask me.

So use what works best, but for ease of use, try out the carrier method first.