Can anyone recommend any good UK based SMS gateway

Question

Has anyone used any in the UK, and if so, were they any good?

Answer 1

Clickatell is a popular SMS gateway. It works in 200+ countries.

Their API offers a choice of connection options via: HTTP/S, SMPP, SMTP, FTP, XML, SOAP, COM Object.

The HTTP/S method is as simple as this: http://api.clickatell.com/http/sendmsg?to=NUMBER&msg=Message+Body+Here (Clickatell API Guide).

The SMTP method consists of sending a plain-text e-mail to: [e-mail], with the following body:

user: xxxxx
password: xxxxx
api_id: xxxxx
to: 448311234567
text: Meet me at home

As for incoming SMSes, you would have to expose an interface through: HTTP, SMPP, SOAP or FTP. For example if you use the HTTP GET and you provide this URL to Clickatell: http://www.yourdomain.com/sms/sms.asp, then Clickatell will send you this HTTP GET with every incoming SMS:

https://www.yourdomain.com/sms/sms.asp?
   api_id=12345&
   from=279991235642&
   to=27123456789&
   timestamp=2008-08-0609:43:50&
   text=Hereisthe%20messagetext&
   charset=ISO-8859-1&
   moMsgId=b2aee337abd962489b123fda9c3480fa

You can also test the gateway (incoming and outgoing) for free from your browser: "Test SMS Gateway".

Answer 2

We use AQL. They arent the cheapest but never had a single issue. We only use for outgoing however so I cant speak for inbound. Simple to use in .NET. Great web interface too.

Answer 3

TM4B offer an easy-to-use web-based API, but there are some limitations to what kind of content it can be used for (nothing to do with music, gambling, drinking), BulkSMS is also quite highly regarded and, once again, offer a very simple web-based API.

I've used both before (we have an SMS provider abstraction library create in-house) and both are as reliable as the underlying transport (SMS is not a guaranteed communication method, so messages can go astray).