[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to send SMS cheaper than Twilio?
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Ask HN: How to send SMS cheaper than Twilio?
Not spam, all double opt-in. Even with 10DLC it's too much $, even
on cheap providers like SignalWire. Email to text is unreliable and
can't do above certain volumes (unless there's some way to get
whitelisted I don't know?) How can I do this for cheaper? Here
are some numbers: Pricing varies by carrier but with my carrier
mix it is between $0.0065 - $0.007 for 1 message on average. I need
to send ~250k each month for now and also need lots of room to send
more. These prices are SignalWire which is the cheapest I found so
far. Bandwidth looks like the same. I think maybe Teli and Telnyx
are a small amount cheaper but not so much.
Author : ShrigmaMale
Score : 41 points
Date : 2022-02-01 14:37 UTC (8 hours ago)
| vertis wrote:
| I've been working on http://parrot.dev, it uses an Android phone
| to enable sending messages from an API, while it's still new it's
| currently in use with a collection of customers.
|
| At 250k it might not meet your needs because whatever phone
| provider you're using might have a problem. It is possible to
| pair it to multiple phones as well.
|
| My existing customers are using it to send ~200 messages a day to
| their subscribers. It supports SMS replies, so you can implement
| stop codes, depending on your needs.
|
| If you want to discuss it more, feel free to reach out (contact
| on profile).
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| This is brilliant.
|
| Do you know what sort of limits mobile service providers impose
| on phones?
| vertis wrote:
| I think it varies heavily, most of my customers are in
| Australia (where Twilio is even more expensive) and it seems
| to be working fine for them currently. But they're not
| sending huge volumes, they're also not sending anything
| mission critical (there is a sweet spot).
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Carriers won't give you an exact limit, most just specify
| "personal use". And they may not catch on right away but once
| they do, they will likely ban your number.
|
| Personal opinion, you're going to have all kinds of issues
| with this in the USA.
| vertis wrote:
| It's an important consideration, and one that I've thought
| about but really lack any ability to gather data on. I
| built this originally to meet the needs of my brother's
| business and his customers.
|
| It has proved useful for him and his customers, and has
| expanded beyond that, but I don't really know how much to
| pursue building it further based off risks like this.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| That is a huge number of SMS messages...what on earth would you
| need that many for with out the revenue to back it?
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Revenue can cover it but I prefer to increase margin with some
| cheaper solution if possible.
| [deleted]
| bgroat wrote:
| This.
|
| If you're sending 250,000 double opt-in SMS messages and can't
| cover $0.007/message you've got a serious pricing problem
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Have you thought about buying a cheap cell phone with a plan? You
| can turn an Android phone into an SMS gateway.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Won't work in practice. We tried that, and (scum)phone
| companies apply arbitrary filters to SMS sent with 'unlimited
| plans', not delivering messages which they don't like.
| Experiments have shown that SMSs with random text arrive in
| 80-90% of cases, but if they contain words like 'verification',
| 'code', 'kod', etc, only about 10% do reach the recipients.
|
| Of course, these same operators offer commercial rates for
| delivering 'branded' messages at a far higher rates.
| sofixa wrote:
| Have you tried cheating their regexes with mixing Cyrillic
| and Latin script? E.g. kod ( the o is Latin, the rest
| Cyrillic). It's the same letter visually but a different
| character. Even Google Translate used to trip up with this.
|
| PS: funny, HN bolds Cyrillic characters
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Mixing helps bypass the screen, and simply sending the
| numbers helped. But still, we decided to ditch this number
| verification thing via SMS altogether and start torturing
| users by missed calls.
| twunde wrote:
| The reason this doesn't work is because of the pressure phone
| carriers have gotten about reducing the amount of spam phone
| calls and SMS (from Congress, state governments and
| regulatory bodies like the FCC). These arbitrary filters on
| consumer level plans are typically about blocking spam from
| spoofed numbers and non-compliant businesses. If you think
| about it, its EXACTLY how email works today. You _can_ try to
| send millions of emails per a second from your gmail account,
| but a) your emails will likely be caught by spam filters due
| to the high volume and b)gmail will notice suspicious
| activity and shut your account down.
| kevincox wrote:
| Although finding a carrier that is ok with this type of use is
| more difficult. Most have fairly low rate limits and will
| consider kicking you off the network.
| iKnowKungFoo wrote:
| Dealing with this now, agree that if you're not generating
| revenue to cover the costs, you're barking up the wrong tree.
| Yes, SMS is easier for the users, but it's also not very secure.
| And that impacts the use cases of your platform.
|
| At a previous employer, the solution was to move off SMS and onto
| internal messaging via native mobile apps. This will shift your
| cost focus, but that levels out as the volume of SMS transactions
| decrease.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Yes I am generating enough revenue but I prefer to increase
| margins with some cheaper provider if I can. Long term you are
| probably right, a mobile app is much cheaper, just takes time.
| kull wrote:
| I have this bookmarked from a few weeks ago found on HN [1].
|
| [1] How to send text messages for free using Python | Use Python
| to send text messages via email
| https://www.alfredosequeida.com/blog/how-to-send-text-messag...
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| I have tried email to sms, it doesn't work at my scale.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Not usable for these high volumes tho.
| [deleted]
| kk6mrp wrote:
| You could set up a dedicated Android phone with SMSSync [0]. It
| isn't maintained but I use it for my own personal use and would
| think it could scale up to meet this kind of demand. I don't know
| the legality of using a cell phone service for this kind of
| service though, might violate their terms of service.
|
| [0] https://github.com/ushahidi/SMSSync
| electroly wrote:
| This obviously violates every carrier's terms of service, at
| least in the United States. There are industry-wide accepted
| rules about this; regular local long codes are not allowed for
| A2P messaging. Your A2P texts will be blocked _long_ before you
| get to 250,000 texts in a month. I would bet that you don 't
| even survive the first day. You're just flying under the radar
| right now because your volume is low.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| Thank you, that's good to know! My messages currently sync to
| a database which has a frontend that I can view and respond
| to messages from. I haven't ever set up any automated
| messages though.
| monocasa wrote:
| You get rate limited pretty quickly from what I've heard.
| Normal carriers don't want you doing this.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| That will get blocked past a few 100s messages each day.
| twunde wrote:
| From someone who's done a fair amount of SMS sending here are
| some things to think about.
|
| - You'll need TCPA compliant opt-ins for US sending. There's a
| cottage industry of people who look for vendors that aren't
| compliant and sue them. The fines range from $500-1500 a SMS or
| call. Sounds like you've already gotten that covered, but
| definitely go over the requirements with a lawyer that
| specializes in it.
|
| - SMS is throttled per a phone number. This is throttled at both
| the provider and the carrier. That means that even if Twilio
| sends something at 10am it might not be sent by Verizon until
| 11am. This absolutely impacts off-hour SMS sending.
|
| - SMS is pricier than email and even at the highest volumes has a
| relatively high floor per a text. I think the floor might be
| $0.004X-$0.005. This is offset by having better response rates
| that email. And as others have mentioned the providers will give
| you better pricing as your volumes go up, but you'll need to talk
| to account reps about that.
|
| - At a certain size (1M+/month?), you can also consider
| integrating directly with the carriers, although that's a longer
| process to get set up.
|
| - You'll need to manage SMS bounce/spam rates like you would for
| email bounce spam rates. You'll end up maintaining a block list
| of known bad phone numbers
|
| Edited for formatting
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| That throttling bit me hard last week. DHL's delivery message
| didn't come until hours after a package was delivered and by
| the time I got it the message the package was already stolen.
| Doesn't help that DHL didn't forward my delivery instructions
| to whatever third party last mile service they used (GSL US).
| Doesn't help that GSL didn't even make it to my address and
| dumped it behind the mailbox 2.5 miles from my house on a
| public road even though there is a secure drop box at the
| actual house address/location. Yesterday told me they'd pay out
| the claim, today they're fighting me over it.
|
| I guess it'll be another month before I can get another
| PineNote developer kit delivered to me (between CNY and
| international shipping). :(
|
| Jokes on whoever stole it. It's a paperweight unless you know
| what to do with it. A pawn shop wouldn't give them anything for
| it.
| tylerrobinson wrote:
| > even if Twilio sends something at 10am it might not be sent
| by Verizon until 11am. This absolutely impacts off-hour SMS
| sending.
|
| Suppose my business is software for restaurants to notify
| customers their table is ready via text. How would I mitigate
| this?
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Thanks. I understand limits these days are based on 10DLC
| trust? Do those throttling still apply even with staying under
| those limits?
|
| I think the floor is 0.0025 to 0.003 based on network access
| fees and depending on carrier. With margin I suppose yes I
| won't get much cheaper.
|
| If I scale to that level I will look at direct integration,
| thanks. Do I still need blacklist if I have double opt in and
| users can opt out? Requiring confirmation would remove the need
| for that?
| twunde wrote:
| Yes, you'll still encounter throttling even with 10DLC trust,
| it will just be less. If I remember correctly 10DLC is
| supposed to have a send rate of 15 text message segments per
| a second, although you can get that bumped up after vetting.
| But for example if you try to send 250K SMS at 10:05 am EST,
| those messages will be queued up and will be received by
| clients at varying times. This is something you'll want to
| monitor. If I remember correctly Twilio (and presumably other
| vendors) will show the actual sent time, so you'll be able to
| compare when you triggered a send with the actual send date.
| Unfortunately I don't think you'll see when clients actually
| receive the SMS unless you've got a personal phone number on
| your send list that you use to monitor. There are also daily
| send limits, which again can be increased after vetting. From
| a software engineering perspective SMS sending is really a
| series of queues. Twilio has its own queue per a number and a
| queue per a carrier. Each carrier maintains their own sending
| queues. As such, you'll want to monitor SMS sending the same
| way you'd monitor a queue ie by measuring throughput, and
| number of items in the queue.
|
| Oh and I forgot to mention that if your SMS includes emojis,
| they get converted to MMS, which typically are more
| expensive. The companies I worked at, did tests and found
| that emojis didn't really impact response rates, although its
| worth testing your specific use-case.
|
| With the double opt in, you probably don't need a blacklist,
| although you may want one for customers that reply with
| expletives, etc (assuming you're supporting 2-way).
| to11mtm wrote:
| > Oh and I forgot to mention that if your SMS includes
| emojis, they get converted to MMS, which typically are more
| expensive
|
| Technically it's more than just emojis, anything outside of
| GSM-7 [0] will result in fallback to UCS-2 and you get
| about half the number of characters per segment.
|
| FWIW Twilio does allow status callbacks so you can see that
| twilio sent the messaage and when(/if, sometimes they
| don't) carrier acknowledged delivery success/failure.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38#GSM_7-bit_defau
| lt_al...
| toast0 wrote:
| > Oh and I forgot to mention that if your SMS includes
| emojis, they get converted to MMS, which typically are more
| expensive.
|
| This might happen, but it really shouldn't. Sending emoji
| as utf-16 surrogate pairs in a message marked as UCS-2
| generally works, even if it's technically invalid. Of
| course, using UCS-2 means 70 symbols? max, instead of the
| 160 you get from a 7-bit GSM encoding (or 140 with an 8-bit
| encoding, if there's a useful one). Emoji that are one
| unicode code point will take up two symbols if they need to
| be sent as surrogage pairs, and if you use any of the
| combining character based emoji, that's going to use your
| message length budget real quick. Pushing you into multiple
| messages or MMS, both of which are expensive.
| mindslight wrote:
| Tangential, but have you thought about offering customers the
| option for emails instead? I'd much rather give you my email
| address, I'd much rather receive email, and it will cost you less
| as well!
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Customers want SMS notifications or similar, I have email also.
| Long term maybe i switch to a mobile app.
| 8bitben wrote:
| Have you tried talking to a sales rep from Twilio or one of the
| other providers? Sometimes they can figure out a discount or
| credit to keep you. Usually they will at least try.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| I will give it a try, hopefully there is something there.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| To do high volume SMS, I think you need a dedicated, business
| toll free number so they can easily track and block your account
| if you start spamming. This is the "white listing" process.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| No carriers all want 10DLC now not toll-free.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Ok, thanks for the feedback.
|
| But from what I read, toll free still allows for higher
| volume.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Carriers are now actively penalizing toll free A2P with
| higher fees and some are straight up filtering them. They
| all want 10DLC where volume is dependent on trust score.
| djyaz1200 wrote:
| If you're willing to commit to a significant monthly spend the
| providers will offer lower rates. Contact several of them and
| collect competing bids.
| brimble wrote:
| ... and this is true for _basically_ every vendor, once you
| have any amount of scale. Including credit card processors.
| Yes, even that one with the really nice API. CDNs. Supposedly
| big cloud providers, but I 've not used them at a scale where
| it was really worth negotiating (for either party).
|
| Quick way to see if you can probably get one: email one of
| their competitors (a sales email address) and tell them what
| your average monthly spending with [current vendor] looks like,
| what your rates with them are, and emphasize that you're
| otherwise happy with them but feel like it might be worth
| moving if you can do significantly better on price. If you get
| back an offer lower than their sticker prices, ask your current
| vendor to match (assuming you're otherwise happy with them).
| Even someone who doesn't like and is kinda bad at negotiating
| can do that.
|
| If they come back with no or trivial movement on price (a 5%
| discount or something can often be had if you just ask) and
| trying to sell you on features instead, you're probably too
| small still. Otherwise, enjoy the savings.
| rabidonrails wrote:
| You should speak to Twilio and Sinch since they're now the two
| main players after their acquisitions of Syniverse and SAP
| respectively. They definitely have pricing power and should be
| able to help out.
|
| Disclosure: My company was acquired by Sinch. (I can try to intro
| you to someone on the inside if you'd like.)
| TheCycoONE wrote:
| You can find a list of US aggregators at
| https://www.usshortcodes.com/partners/find-partner; though it
| doesn't appear to be up to date with the latest acquisitions.
| On top of the ones the parent mentioned, mGage was acquired by
| Kaleyra that I know of.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Thanks, I will reach out about Sinch. I looked at them but
| didn't see pricing and wanted to avoid sales run-around, but
| it's probably worth while.
|
| Update: I created an account and managed to find pricing, it's
| almost 2x what I pay other providers.
| rabidonrails wrote:
| Send me a note and I'll intro you to the right people.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| If you don't contact sales then you can't get discounts for
| things that might not be a big deal to you but are to them.
| Committing to staying with them for a period, minimum spends
| for that period, paying up front. These things can generally
| get you discounts.
| czhu12 wrote:
| We purchased a shortcode with Twilio for 3k a quarter, then with
| their bulk pricing discounts, we are able to send text messages
| with a 70% discount off the ticket price.
|
| Source: We send many millions of messages a month via Twilio.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'm not sure but I've always suspected you could get cheaper if
| you went with a modem like this[0] and prepaid sims. You'd have
| to test for shadowbans and swap out bad cards, but I bet you
| could get it to work. However how much cheaper this is once you
| factor in time running around buying prepaid sims? it's probably
| not worth it.
|
| [0] <"38400 MMS one hour"> https://www.alibaba.com/product-
| detail/4G-Voip-Gateway-LTE-A...
| TheCycoONE wrote:
| That could easily run afoul of 10DLC unless you go through the
| process of registering your number with the carriers for A2P
| traffic (something Twilio or the another aggregator normally
| does for you.)
| daveidol wrote:
| You could integrate "Verify With Snapchat" and push users towards
| that instead (requires users to have a Snapchat account)
|
| https://snapkit.com/login-kit (scroll down to "Never Pay for SMS
| Verifications Again")
| smoyer wrote:
| You might want to fix your title if you can still edit (sp).
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Thanks, I did.
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