Selecting the right bulk SMS provider is crucial, focusing on features like 100% deliverability speed or cost-effectiveness.
Your choice should balance service features, affordability, reliability, and customer support to align with your business needs.
This guide aims to help identify the most suitable bulk SMS service for you.
Finding the types of services that British businesses and organisations need from a Bulk SMS Service provider takes some time to appreciate and comprehend the variety of features offered by Bulk SMS Providers who send thousands or even hundreds of thousands of SMS each month for marketing campaigns, special offers or deals, alerts to customer and staff updates.
British companies want to know more about the services these bulk sms companies can offer clients for a prompt, mass text messaging service.
Of course, ensuring you have the right type of service requires extensive research, and a full comprehension of the conditional requirements for distribution which covers features such as price, reliability, customer service, and certification like ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 for quality and security.
To make your life much easier, an easy-to-follow Bulk SMS British Comparison Table and a range of sites have been prepared by experts in the SMS discipline so that rational, clear and concise decisions can be made by you if wishing to engage the right SMS service provider.
In the UK, we are fortunate enough to have a good variety of bulk SMS providers who offer a good range of text messaging services through either the usage of mobile communication systems, mobile phones or the Web. This means that bulk SMS can be distributed in small to large volumes to any modern mobile phone through the use of different wireless providers. Each text message is limited to 160 characters, including spaces. A charge is associated with the distribution of a text message.
In the review carried out that formulated the bulk SMS UK services comparison table and this particular site it found that the best services ranged from some of the widely used SMS providers in the UK.
In the UK, several SMS providers stand out due to their unique offerings tailored to diverse business needs.
Although their features and services did differ, as will be discussed, they did offer the requirements that companies would want from a mass SMS company. The timely ease of distribution by only providing the database of customers, employees or the general public was all that was required. It does not matter whether the mass distribution is in hundreds or thousands of contacts. It only takes a few moments whether it be seconds or minutes to send a single SMS to the recipient, and if required, to gain a record of responses. As you can imagine, using the text messaging service is an efficient and effective way of communication.
The advantage of sending a mass SMS message through a bulk SMS provider is that no software is required to download or install. This is because these providers are web-based which means that the only requirement is to have access to the Internet.
The bulk SMS provider can save the organisation’s contacts and able to set up groups to manage such contacts. This way when a bulk text message is required, you only have to notify the provider which group or groups that needs to be set up and sent in a matter of seconds.
Price is a big factor when it comes to delivering large quantities of text messages. In the review of a number of bulk SMS providers, it was noted that prices vary significantly between different competitors for different volumes of messages distributed, whether they be 500+, 10 000+, 100 000+, or 500 000+, 1 000 000+ SMS over a month. For low volumes, the charges varied by up to 20%. With larger volumes, around 100,000+ they varied by around 30%. For the largest volumes of around 250,000 or more, the difference in variation was around 30%.
The comparison table of bulk SMS service providers is listed as cheapest to most expensive.
The price differences show that some bulk SMS providers are inclined towards lower volume distribution while others offer better from a larger distribution. Therefore it is to the client or prospective client’s advantage to check around and send what competing bulk SMS providers have to offer in terms of charges.
Please be aware that in the author’s review of the pricing structure of these bulk SMS service companies, they can change their costing at any time without giving anyone prior warning or notification.
When considering the right bulk SMS service provider, one needs to consider other major features offered rather than just considering charges alone.
Firstly, be aware of the availability of a two-way process by the bulk company. This means that a text message can be sent in bulk to a specific target within a time frame specified but also the client can review and judge the effectiveness by requesting a report on the outcomes of the distribution. This can be forwarded to the client through a tracking analysis that can be exported on easy to follow spreadsheet or viewed on the web. This means that you can know straight away what are the responses to the SMS sent out.
Secondly, there are different ways these bulk SMS companies can service your needs through high-speed gateway connections which means they can distribute mass SMS within short time-frames. Again, these providers can provide a delivery report that displays matters such as bounces of messages sent through the API or online platform.
As you can observe from the representation below, both SMS Tech and Textit have a very good rating of above 90 out of a hundred while DirectSMS, SMS Global and SMS Central rate in the 80s. indicating a good level of features provided to assist the effectiveness of distribution.
Reliability and latency features should be extremely important factors for any potential client who wishes to engage a bulk SMS service provider. The reassurance that the text message service can secure a schedule on a set transmission time means that the client knows that the message will be communicated when required. This is critically important for reminder notices for appointments for introducing a new product or service or for promoting a marketing campaign.
In the UK, there are ways text messaging services can function either by: 1) Premium bulk text message service offering a high level of reliability and fast execution of SMS but offer at a higher cost. 2) Cheap bulk text message service offering a lower level of reliability, delivery may take a longer period but may offer at a lower cost.
When reviewing each bulk SMS service company make sure that they can assure you of an uptime latency of over 90% level. However, some companies will go further and provide an even better 99.9% or 100% service level guarantee as part of their overall reliability and latency features.
Reviewing these major bulk SMS service providers, the majority of them service clients well from a reliability and latency perspective with companies.
Finally, support-related services are another feature that needs to be investigated, whether it be call centre support, delivery reports, spam compliance or free trial availability.
Customer or client support facilities include phone support in times of need. Other than WholesaleSMS, all the other service providers do offer this facility on a business-hours basis. So during the week, there is either the option to discuss with a call centre staff member on a dedicated number or email and wait for a response.
To entice potential new clients or customers a free trial of SMS distribution is available to review its effectiveness as a means of effective communication. The number of SMS on a free trial basis varies from five free SMS to a maximum of 60 free SMS. A list of present clients can be viewed on the service provider’s website or the authors’ bulk SMS Service Providers Comparison Table.
Other than Textit, all the other service providers are SPAM compliant and provide a privacy policy and many provide a cleansing option for present contact SMS lists.
The Bulk SMS Provider UK Comparison Table has been set up for you as a reader to use free of charge. The authors, who have worked previously in the text messaging service, and know the industry well, want you to be able to make a good educated decision about which provider fits best with your requirements. Alternatively, if you wish to compare different bulk service providers, then this site and table will assist you.
The reason behind the development of this site was the awareness of the difficulty companies had in deciphering features related, costings, service-related and support-related features. Each company has a different way of explaining what it has to offer. Therefore, a simple yet easy-to-follow table and site was developed using the expertise of these authors knowledge and experience.
It needs to be emphasised that some of the service providers change their features and costing structure without any further notification. If the information on this site or comparison table is different then please let the authors know so that these changes can be made as soon as possible.
If you use this site and click through to the website of a service provider and engage them, then the authors will request a commission from the particular bulk SMS provider.
Last edited on 24 March 2024