bulksms.com review of its SMS gateway UK service

smsbulk.com offers a good range of gateway features 

Derived from the SMS UK Gateway Comparison Table,  it is shown that bulksms.com offers a modern EAPI (Electronic Application Programming Interface) which enables its clients to be SMS enabled to their own computer and mobile application. This simplifies the encoding of characters for various languages, automatically deals with long messages and supports multiple web-hooks for pushing status reports or receiving text messages to the web server. The EAPI is used for activities from automatic notifications to message delivery reports.

It can be seen that bulksms.com has a large range of powerful features in their SMS API which:

• Prompt messaging to individuals or groups
• Two-way messaging both locally and internationally
• Status (delivery) reports
• Sending of long SMS messages
• Distributing messages using Unicode character sets
• Incoming long numbers
• Customer sender ID.

One of the innovative systems adopted by this provider is their bulksms.com App which enables you to send large volumes of text messages from your iPhone, iPad or iPod. Added to this service is the offer of dedicated long numbers. These are standard rated long numbers offered to clients wanting to receive mobile originating text messages.

bulksms.com provides application-to-person (A2P) messaging services to large, medium and small businesses, individuals as well as to non for profit organisations.  As previously stated, it was one of the first commercial web-based messaging platforms in UK and now connects its customers to over 800 GSM networks in more than 200 countries.

It provides a standard platform to allow its clients to quickly deploy short and important messages using SMS
communications, allowing for SMS API integration, SMS competitions, SMS voting, SMS information
services, SMS campaigns and more.

bulksms.com offers good value

bulksms.com review focused on their SMS Gateway UK does indicate that their charges are very comparable to other gateway providers and, in a number of pricing schedules published it can seen to be less costly than their equivalent competitors. This is dependent on the volume of text messages distributed on a monthly basis. It has charges ranging in volume from over 100 to over 28,000 SMS. The discount becomes more effective as the volume of text message messages increases, with the highest volume gaining a 28% discount for each SMS.

There is a special offer in charges for non for profit organisations and schools. It is matter of looking up their website to view the charges offered.

BulkSMS does not charge a setup fee, no monthly fee and there is no contractual arrangements or other hidden fees.

Reliability of bulksms.com as a Gateway provider

bulksms.com does offer a three routing option. It can use direct carriers within the country which is most reliable, a hybrid version which uses the country’s system supported by different overseas telecommunication carriers or overseas carriers which are cheaper but less reliable to get a text message across. The Premium direct carrier is a more reliable form of transmission but at a higher cost which is absorbed into the final charge per text message. There is also the Economy and Standard options which uses hybrid and overseas carriers.

This company stresses it uses the best possible delivery routes for the SMS messages to be distributed but may affect the delivery cost, especially when sending to international numbers.

The main issue is the lack of information about their uptime delivery of text messages providing details on the percentage of text messages that are successfully received to the end point user and no detail of time factor as to the time taken for delivery to the end point. Reliability can be measured by its reassurance that it provides a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantee. This SMS provider does not provide evident on this service.

bulksms.com states that it provides coverage to over 800 networks in more than 200 countries. Larger British businesses can utilize such web-based e-mail to SMS gateways through API feeds.

Customer Care Service of BulkSMS as a Gateway provider

The fact that bulksms.com is very transparent at all times and open to discussion is indicative by their range of telephone contact numbers, and their email support. They do provide FAQ, a Video Tutorial and API documentation. An international number is highlighted within their website for overseas clients.

They offer limited support (via email only) on Saturdays, Sundays which is good but one needs to recognize that it may take some time for a response to be received.

They overtly outline their privacy and anti-spam policy and take effect on the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which acts as both a data controller, in that they process client data, and a data processor, in delivering an SMS messaging service on behalf of their clients.

With a range to features, our SMS Gateway Comparison review found bulksms.com to be a most worthy of serious consideration and therefore were rated highly among their peers.