Scripts

Email to SMS

Last Update
5 February 2012
Regular License
$3
Extended License
$15
Sales
109

Email to SMS is an object-oriented PHP library for sending text messages using the email-to-SMS gateways that carriers provide.

It’s important to understand that Email to SMS is a library, not an application, which means that it doesn’t do anything on its own. Instead, it works as a third-party component for your existing application or website, allowing you to send text messages from your code.

Sending messages with Email to SMS is free (although recipients may be charged by their carrier as with normal text messages), but be aware of a few drawbacks compared to paid services like Clickatell, Tropo, and Twilio. Messages you send will come from your email address, not your phone number. You may also be limited to less than 160 characters, depending on the carrier. Finally, due to the nature of email-to-SMS (messages are sent as emails to the carrier’s gateway, which resends them as text messages) this method can be somewhat unreliable.

If you are looking to send text messages to yourself or to a few people, this is certainly a good option to consider. However, I do not recommend using this library to send bulk messages to tens or hundreds of people.

Demo (Live Preview) Source Code

Quite a few people have been emailing me asking for the source code to the demo, which I have been happy to give them. To make it more convenient, I have now posted it publicly for anyone to download (it does not include the Email to SMS library itself, and you will of course still need to purchase that for the demo source code to be of any use. To download the source code, go to the demo (Live Preview), and you will find instructions at the bottom of the page.

Special Features

Send text messages to multiple recipients at once Send images (and potentially other files) as attachments to MMS messages (limited support)

Supported Carriers

Canada

Bell ~ Fido ~ Koodo Mobile MTS President’s Choice Telecom Rogers Sasktel Solo Mobile Telus ~ Virgin Mobile ~

United States

7-Eleven SpeakOut Alaska Communications Systems Alltel ~ AT&T ~ Bluegrass Cellular Boost Mobile ~ Cellcom Cellular South CellularOne Centennial Wireless ~ Cincinnati Bell ~ Cricket ~ i wireless ~ Illinois Valley Cellular Long Lines MetroPCS ~ Mobi PCS Page Plus ~ Qwest Wireless ~ SouthernLINC Sprint ~ Straight Talk ~ T-Mobile ~ Thumb Cellular Tracfone ~ U.S. Cellular ~ Unicel Verizon Wireless ~ Virgin Mobile ~

Carriers marked with a tilda ~ support MMS .

Important: It seems that most carriers outside of North America do not actually work because they no longer have email-to-SMS gateways in place, so I can only officially support the United States and Canada. Carriers in other countries may still be included with the library, but I can make no guarantee that they will work. If you’d like to try some of them, feel free to use the demo to see if they work for you, but again, please understand that I am only including them as a convenience and am not supporting them.

MMS is only supported for carriers that have an email-to-MMS gateway. If you would like to confirm that MMS is supported for your carrier, try the demo.

Also Important: Please understand that I cannot make any guarantees about how well sending images in MMS messages will work. The feature should be considered experimental, and frankly it probably won’t ever get better than it is now. Please be sure to try the demo to get some idea of how it will work for your carrier, if at all. Supporting MMS is dependent entirely on the carrier’s email-to-MMS gateway.

If there is a carrier not on the list that you would like me to add support for (if possible), just send me an email via my profile page. However, please understand that I will most likely be unable to support carriers in foreign countries (anything besides the United States and Canada).

Notes

Email to SMS was created for PHP 5 .3+ since it makes use of namespaces, but a special version of the library for older versions of PHP is also included that works exactly the same; the only real difference is the class names and the lack of namespaces in the latter version. Documentation is included for both versions.

Questions, Comments, Complaints

If you have any questions, comments, or complaints, I ask that you please bring them up with me before leaving a bad rating. I will make every effort to help you and provide a fix if there’s a problem with the library. The best way to get in touch with me is to send me an email via my profile page.