Twilio Alternatives?
reddit / selfhosted

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hostedbyjake · 2023-11-15 07:24

Hi all,

Looking for some advice for a cheaper Twilio alternative. For context,

I developed a site for my family that's in medicine, it texts her
patients their daily dose of whatever their protocol is set to on her
website. It's been a staple with her patients now as the doses can be
a lot to remember. We are currently using twilio, but with hundreds of
patients each getting texts every day, the cost is starting to add up.

I bought an android phone, and an extra phone plan, and set up an SMS
gateway there but got banned from the mobile provider after a day of
sending the text alerts. Was optimistic about that plan and the cost
savings, did not expect such a rapid ban like that.

Any way I can keep the cost down for this that isn't Twilio?

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Npm2001 · 2023-11-15 07:53

Messagebird are good

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aimecyuzuzo · 2023-11-15 09:10

Might find infobid a good option.

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emprezario · 2023-11-15 09:30

Which provider did you use and what sms gateway? Zender?

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rrrmmmrrrmmm · 2023-11-15 10:15

You're probably looking for
[Fonoster](https://github.com/fonoster/fonoster)

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rrrmmmrrrmmm · 2023-11-15 10:18

[Fonoster](https://github.com/fonoster) is planning to become a Twilio
alternative.

[They don't have SMS support yet](https://github.com/orgs/fonoster/pro
jects/9/views/1?pane=issue&itemId=1475647) however.

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tankerkiller125real · 2023-11-15 10:58

Telnyx, they're very well known, and they run their own network (so
it's extremely stable) and it's pretty cheap. Plus you can use Hosted
SMS if you want to add SMS capabilities to existing numbers, even land
line numbers.

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dazchad · 2023-11-15 13:26

Twilio charges less than a cent for each message. A hundred messages
is 79c. I’d be surprised to find any other solution that is
dramatically cheaper. On AWS it would be 58c.

Those prices are in US, but I would be surprised if those services
weren’t competitive in other markets.

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desnudopenguino · 2023-11-15 18:27

Have you talked to someone at twilio about a high volume discount?

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unofficialtech · 2023-11-15 21:57

You could look at email to text options.  Would require the user to
submit their provider and keep it current, but then you can email to
usually something like (phonenumber)@txt.att.net or something.  Not
all providers may be supported.

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Emi_Be · 2023-11-17 11:54

SIGNL4 can be considered as an alternative to Twilio. It's a mobile
alerting platform. Typically there are other use cases, it's primarily
focused on incident management and team communication, but it could
potentially be used for sending text alerts or push notifications to
patients as well. I guess it also depends on your exact budget and how
old the patients are as they would need to download an app.

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kmisterk · 2023-11-17 18:06

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