Email to SMS Quickly and Cheaply?

March 26, 2007 9:48 AM

What is the best / cheapest / most reliable Email to SMS service? I want to find out when certain people email me (friends, family, work colleagues), ignoring the spam or the newletters.

I'm in the UK if it makes much difference.

I know Yahoo does this service at the moment (I use it at the moment: Gmail and Gmail for my domain forward required emails to a secret Yahoo address to then text me when I get new emails) but they're withdrawing it on 3rd April. I've found several pieces of software here but my laptops not always on, and thats the whole point of why I want it: just got in from work, going out in an hour? "Have I got an important email? No, okay, don't need to put on computer". "Ohhh crap, got email from boss, will switch on computer"

I know this won't be free, but the cheaper the better really.

Thanks for your help guys :)

posted by philsi to computers & internet (7 comments total)

fastmail will let you do this. and you could use their scripts/filters to be selective.
posted by rbs at 10:29 AM on March 26, 2007

Just use Gmail's filters to do this. SMS is just email, so if you don't already know your sms email address, get it from your carrier and then set up filters in Gmail to forward matching emails to your sms email address.
posted by ewagoner at 10:31 AM on March 26, 2007

SMS is just email

No, it isn't. But you're right that most carriers will provide an email-to-SMS gateway. Those aren't always free, though.
posted by mendel at 10:38 AM on March 26, 2007

Ahhh thanks rbs - that looks like what I'm looking for. Do you use it / know if its any good / reliable?

ewagoner, my carrier (O2) doesn't make it exactly easy to find out my SMS email address and charges me more to receive emails on it than it costs for me to set up another service!
posted by philsi at 11:02 AM on March 26, 2007

On some carriers you can find your SMS email by sending an SMS to your regular email address.
posted by yohko at 11:16 AM on March 26, 2007

I second the Gmail filter suggestion. If you need to find out how to email an sms, look up your provider on this list.
posted by .taft at 7:20 PM on March 26, 2007

If you are a webmaster with access to your own domain, you can create this yourself.

The email you receive should be piped to a script. That script would trigger the sms and do anything else you want with it (e.g. forward it to a gmail account).

If you're still trying to accomplish this, let me know.
posted by fambizzari at 2:26 AM on April 10, 2007