mtnsms.com > Reviews > Good for International SMSing

Author's product rating:   

Navigation	Excellent
Features	Good

Advantages:	lots of networks, address book, quick on the whole
Disadvantages:	have to register, occasional delys

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

mtnsms.com is an SMS gateway, offering free text messaging via the internet. I was originally attracted by the fact that they offer one of the highest character counts per message at 144 out of 160 (some only give you 107 or so!) although other providers do concatenated SMS messages, where longer ones are split into multiple messages. The other thing that I found positive was that they list useage figures, so that you can see how popular the service has been. They boasted figures such over 4 million members, 24 million SMSes sent in the last month, and 13,000 new members in the last 24hours.

Furthermore there are currently 208 networks in 85 countries that ae supported by the service, although there were a few surprise omissions, with A1 Austria's second business network with around 2.5m customers missing. There is a function where you can ask for e-mail updates as networks are added. For GB all the four networks are covered, as are the networks in the channel islands and Isle of Man.

You do have to register for mtnsms.com, but this is fairly easy to do, although there is a catch namely that you have to invite a friend (they can of course turn down the invitation) as part of the registration. Once you have entered your confirmation number, then you can use the service. The referred person's name is then stored in your address book, and this is one function that not all SMS gateways have. MTNSMS maintains that on average SMSes are usually sent within 10 seconds, although obviously there are occasions when the service is a lot slower.

You can also track an SMS to see if it has been sent or not, which is useful, and reassuring, seeing as your SMSes are sent via MTN (Mobile Telephone Network) in South Africa. The site is bright (loud!) but very easy to navigate around, and the service works well.

You also have the choice between SMS-xtra and SMS-xpress where you can send to multiple people, or send SMSes quicker respectively, and the choice is available through the setup menu. The former function is useful, especially for notifying people of a phone number change. I have found the service to work well and often use it because I can SMS people all over the world, although for GBonly you may be better off sticking to genie.co.uk.