Texting Software

[Ashley_Price]

Is there any software that allows you to text from your PC without your mobile connected?

Ideally I would like software that would send the text and the cost be added to my Vodafone bill (I've put a message up on Vodafone's message board to see if they do something like this).

If you know of other software please provide a link.

Please note: I do not want the software that sends the text for free, but puts an advert on as well. The texts I am sending are business ones from BananaOffice - I don't want other ads being sent as well.

 

[Ashley_Price]

Found something.

Vodafone does a "Text Centre" that works through Outlook!

 

[streetslocal]

You must try www.txtlocal.co.uk excellent easy to use system and cheap.
You can also set the company name to appear as Bannana office or what ever company name you want.
I sent my Mrs a message the other week from NHS DIRECT
Telling her that her Piles appointment was due

 

[garyk]

Yep I use txtlocal as well good service, simple to integrate, you can do an email to sms so with your account setup just send an email to <mobile no>@txtlocal.co.uk

As streets says you can set the sender to be who you like, in fact if you send someone a message and put in a number that is in the recipients phone book at appears as if it has come from them, very funny, potentially very dangerous!

 

[Ashley_Price]

Thanks for those, but so far already Vodafone's own software is doing what I want - especially as my mobile is with Vodafone.

 

[Textlocal]

Hi Ashley (thanks guys!)

If you want a free account to test Txtlocal simply sign up from the homepage and PM me and I will talk you through everything and give you 50 free messages for testing.

Check out the demo of our industry leading online SMS service at: http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/tour/

We also offer email to SMS, API for programmers, premium SMS etc

While Textcentre will be cheaper for you per SMS (part of your monthly bundles.. so free!), txtlocal has a huge amount of extra functionality, flexability and support.

Also, I can't install TextCentre on my Vista laptop - just says "cant install"!

Cheers,

Al.

 

[Ashley_Price]

Thanks, Al, I hadn't picked up on the fact that the service is by a member on UKBF.

At the moment Text Centre is fine for us, because, as you rightly say, we get 250 texts as part of a bundle - therefore free. So we pass this onto the client (that's right, we don't charge for sending you a text as some firms do).

If we had to pay a fee for each text sent, it would be a cost that would have to be passed onto the client.

Thankfully, we're still running Windows XP and have no plans to upgrade yet, so no problems with compatibility.

 

[LandingNet]

Hi Ashley

Try http://www.vodafone.net and sign up for a free account; it integrates with your mailbox so you can use it to send text messages and send/receive faxes and emails. Good thing about it is that you can be at any PC connected to the net to send a text and not rely on having to use your own.

I first signed up for one when I joined Vodafone as an analyst 7 years ago, and now I've been left the company for a year and a half I still use it as my main account.

On a side note, we've recently signed up to http://www.textmarketer.co.uk/ which are very good in my opinion. The interface isn't that pretty, but it works very well and the texts are 4.9pence no matter how many credits you buy.

Shaun

 

[Ashley_Price]

Since posting this I've become very unsatisfied with Vodafone Text Centre. While it's great that it loads into Outook and syncs with my Vodafone account, it has one big problem. As the day goes on it seems to start sending multiple copies of the same message.

I've had people contact me saying they've had up to eight copies of the same message all within minutes of each other.

So, does anyone know of other good software?

 

[Textlocal]

Yes,

Please come and look at www.txtlocal.com - view the tour on our homepage, and sign up for a free account to have a play! We are voted "SMS service of choice" in a recent PC Pro magazine review.

Let me know when you have joined and I will give you 50 free messages to thoroughly test the system - and a full guided tour

Cheers,

Alastair
Director
Txtlocal (UK)

 

[Ashley_Price]

Thanks, Alistair, I'll give this a good going over tomorrow!

 

[LandingNet]

I used to work for Vodafone customer services a few years back, and you'll be surprised by how many people had the same issue. The large majority of people found that they had multiple entries of each contact in their address book

 

[SneakSMS]

Our software is going to be re-released in a couple of days (site is being recoded and software needed to be adjusted to fit into the system).

It's a VERY simple piece of software (perhaps too simple for your needs),

But if you are at a loose end, I'm sure something can be worked out

 

[Ashley_Price]

The large majority of people found that they had multiple entries of each contact in their address book

Thanks for this, but we don't have that problem. After all, if our software was sending multiple copies to multiple entries surely that number of texts would show in the Sent Texts folder, which doesn't happen.

 

[accountancyextra]

Funnily enough, I've been looking for something similar recently myself.

However, I'm wanting to integrate it with my CRM system (Microsoft Dynamics), so that once the mobile number is stored in CRM, I don't have to rekey it elsewhere.

Does any provider offer this functionality?

 

[LandingNet]

www.textmarketer.co.uk do, and I beleive TxtLocal (a member on this forum) do to

 

[GreenLaser]

Have you tried visiting Chikka.com? Their service includes sending text messages for free .

 

[deadgoodundies]

I just use skype for texting from my PC so although it doesn't come off my Vodafone bill it comes off my skypeout credits (but shows my mobile phone as the originator)

 

[Ashley_Price]

However, I'm wanting to integrate it with my CRM system (Microsoft Dynamics), so that once the mobile number is stored in CRM, I don't have to rekey it elsewhere.

Does any provider offer this functionality?

From quick exploration with Txtlocal, although it doesn't appear to directly integrate with other software, if you can export the relevant data from your CRM software to a spreadsheet you can import it into Txtlocal. Much better than having to rekey everything.

 

[Textlocal]

Txtlocal offers 2 interfaces for integration:

1) Email to SMS: http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/emailtosms/ - you simply send emails to [email protected] and the body gets converted to SMS. Very simple. So - in your CRM system you often have a "email2" field - a "secondary" email field. Use this to create your new email address of [email protected] - and then when you send emails to these addresses they will be sent as SMS. Very simple! You could convert on mass by exporting all your data to Excel... populating the "email2" field using the "concatonate string" function, abd then reimport the data.

2) SMS API for programmers: http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/api/ - you need to have some programming knowledge for this, but it is simply 7 lines of code to integrate SMS text into any application or website.

Both interfaces are free to use.. simply buy SMS credits in bundles via the control panel.

Cheers,

Al
Txtlocal

 

[Ashley_Price]

Txtlocal is looking good, Al. It's going to get a thorough going over tomorrow.

 

[Ashley_Price]

Well, txtlocal is looking brilliant! Got our clients listed on it that we text regularly.

 

[Rienne]

www.textmarketer.co.uk do, and I beleive TxtLocal (a member on this forum) do to

I signed up with textmarketer, asked if they could integrate with a particular application and got a canned response. On asking again, was brushed off with a very offhand reply and no help at all. This was after the canned response had informed me that "[FONT=&quot]Our gateway is a powerful & flexible API that allows you to send SMS messages from your own software application, server or web site."

[/FONT]I'm glad I asked before paying any money or wasting time. I'll look at txtlocal I think.

edit - the app was Zimbra.

 

[nav2100]

On a side note - our newly launched website pureTXT could be worth a look for you. We also offer email to SMS and a very basic HTTP API which can be integrated into your own systems.

You can sign up for a free account with 20 free test credits, and setup a free inbound keyword (to collect customer nubmbers) and any number of free sender IDs!

Just thought it could be of use to you, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if there's anything we can do for you.

Kind regards,

Nav

 

[Rienne]

Have sent you a PM

 

[Ashley_Price]

Happy to report that Txtlocal is great. Have been using it for a month and no problems.

 

[streetslocal]

txtlocal offer an amazing service glad to know your having an easy time with them....

 

[Heart Communications]

Hi Ashley,

If a call answering client wanted their messages by email and sms, would you need to send an email, then login to txtlocal and send the text message separately?

Regards,
Amy

 

[nav2100]

Hi Ashley,

If a call answering client wanted their messages by email and sms, would you need to send an email, then login to txtlocal and send the text message separately?

Regards,
Amy

Hi Amy,

Using pureTXT you can forward the message at the same time as sending the email without logging into the website.

Just forward the email as: clientsnumber AT puretxt.com and enter your username and desired sender ID in the subject line.

You can also have a standalone little program running on your PC which you can send texts from and choose different sender IDs at any time - all without having to wait for Internet Explorer to open and logging in online.

Kind regards,

Nav

 

[Brightpearl]

Hello Ashley - did you know you can SMS straight from your Pearl CRM/Invoicing account? We use intelliSMS, and of course you can configure it however you like.

Chris