Newly launched TelstraDev developer portal (Note: you will need to know developer things to use this) has a messaging API that will give you 1000 sms/mms for free. It will also let you provision a random Australian mobile number to send them from and will allow users to respond which can be sent automatically to a registered webhook (so you dont need to check for responses.
The sms pricing from Twilio in Australia is 0.057 so it is actually comparable.
Thanks for picking up on that.
For my needs, I'll stick with Twilio anyway, as so many services I use have integration with it already.
Running the maths, that means Telstra is cheaper unless you're sending more than 2000 SMSes a month.
Is there a way to see how many SMSes you have left? I assume that I'll have to go through the Analytics and pick a period of time to get that data?
You can check how many messages you have sent via the login at dev.telstra.com
Website down? (nope blocked at work)
haha nice
1000 per month for free, or the first 1000 free?
Just the first 1000
Thanks for asking this, not even going to bother if that's the case.
Looks like Developer Steve is using his own link sharer and possibly tracking your clicks.
Its more ozbargin wouldnt let me submit dev.telstra.com but feel free to visit that site directly.
What's the maximum MMS attachment size? Are images automatically scaled down?
Should be scaled depending on device, max size will be 1 to 2 meg depending on sever/script sending and allowed bandwidth out.
Any plans to make the write operations, e.g. message send endpoint and receive web-hook, idempotent? With something like targeted SMS delivery it's a pretty big selling point.
Good idea, we have a user voice coming soon for requesting new features and up-voting other ideas.
I tried registering for this on Saturday actually, except the registration page wouldn't send me the SMS verification. Multiple devices, browsers, phones later, I eventually raised a ticket on Saturday afternoon - 4 hour target to resolution apparently. I received my ticket number on Sunday and I'm still waiting for a response today.
If I'm not getting the verification SMS from the Telstra dev site, what hope do I have?
EDIT: So I figured I'd try again after seeing this and it works now. Sweet!
Yep we were deploying some site changes before the launch over the weekend but will totally work now
So you tried to register for an SMS service but the verification SMS failed. Hmm.
1K sms one-off = not worth the effort
@developersteve, how long does the allocated number live with the App? The doco says 30days or how long you sign up for.
Is there a cost to get/keep the number? Id hate changing it every few months… I have been using smsglobal with a shared number (they demand $50pm!) - twilio is looking better at $6 than smsglobal.
So you can set the number of activedays for the mobile number via the provisioning API, ive just set mine to 365 days https://dev.telstra.com/messaging-api/apis/get/messages/prov…
We have more advanced features in the pipeline for that too including premium number registering (handy for campaigns)
Thanks
Good for the freebie, but ongoing is pretty expensive compared to Twilio (unless you're sending a small number of messages). Considering it's Telstra, I'm not surprised.
Telstra: From $0.06 AUD per message (looks like the phone number may be free)
Twilio: From $0.0075 USD per message (although you pay $6/month for the phone number)