Ask HN: What are the best services for sending texts to real numbers?

[colomofo]

Hoping to get some advice from other HN startup people.

I'd like to send SMS messages to users that are 100% opt-in and welcomed by the users. Nothing to do with spam.

But I only want to send SMS messages to users with "real" cell phone numbers because I'd like to also use it as a abuse-reduction mechanism.

And I'd like to restrict costs so that I'm not spending more than maybe 1-2 cents per SMS, even if that requires limiting which users can receive them.

I'd like to be able to send 5-10k (now) to 100k (later) SMS per day.

I've checked out some services but it seems pretty difficult to compare them without actually using them.

Hoping some people here have some good recommendations.

Thank you!

[tripue]

Reducing cost can be difficult in this space, we've been working on this for a while at Ding by leveraging different route and channel, maybe we can help.

Don't hesitate to ping me directly matias@ding.live

[DerekBickerton]

SMS is a dated technology and I despise services that use SMS, especially for OTP / PINs used to sign in. SIM cards can be 'swapped' by bad actors all too easily. I understand you want to stop abuse, but there's other ways to do this like CAPTCHAs or putting your site on Cloudflare and filtering out rogue/malicious IPs like VPNs/Tor, or doing things like rate-limiting.

[colomofo → DerekBickerton]

Yeah, I'd never use SMS for 2FA in 2023. Mine is not a security sensitive use-case.

I'm currently planning to use Twilio or Plivo with their Lookup APIs to filter out VOIP-type phone numbers and to send messages.

The lookups seem to basically double the cost (for U.S. numbers) but is still relatively affordable.

Somewhat worried about A2P 10DLC since I've never dealt with it and don't know how much of a blocker or delayer it is.

I'd really just like a cheaper (but reliable) service that combines texts to exclusively personal mobile numbers.

[DerekBickerton → colomofo]

There's a list of some services here besides Twilio: https://www.producthunt.com/search?q=SMS