SMS is just too outdated, bugging and has become a medium of SPAM due to it’s uncontrollable push nature. There is a need to change (replace) this decade old technology. My aim is to provide alternate tech replacing SMS to developers.
There are so many P2P messaging apps are available in the market but none are developer centric and they all focus only on P2P communications while a vast majority of people still rely on SMS to get updates like:
1. Monitoring services/servers
2. Getting transactional alerts like getting alerts when somebody made an ecom transaction on their website etc.
3. Communicating info to authorised person through automated means like malfunction in machine to the supervisor.
The best part is it is permission based and fully controllable, inexpensive and available across platforms.
Why permission based? Let’s say you opted for Cricket Alerts from Vendor A, after some time this Vendor A sold the data to Vendor B, which is a Real Estate developer. Now in the case of SMS you were helpless and must look for SMS Blocker kind of apps to save yourself from such spammers but with our solution this Vendor B can be blocked on his very first transaction as well as the Vendor A. That way you will be always safe from such vultures those who spam your inbox just to sell their stuff.
Inexpensive: For developers it’s an inexpensive way to communicate data to the user because there is no Mobile Operator involved who is deciding what should you pay, no govt agency is involved, which decides when can you send and what can you send.
Across Platforms: Like sms information can be pushed across all the mobile (currently limited to Android, iOS, WP x and Blackberry) with an Internet connectivity. Thats the only price you need to pay for moving away from SMS.
Why did I start this project?
Since I am managing over 30 servers for our SMS and Toll-Free services (yes, this is my core business) I (along with my team) always needed to be updated about their status. Previously we were relying on SMS for the communication part but sending 1000s of SMS on daily basis just to inform the status start bugging me because the cost of SMS has jumped 10 times. I wanted to develop some solution, which can provide us real time updates without much of cost. While e-mail could have become a solution for this, my team doesn’t want this because apart from me none of them carrying blackberry and on iphone and android push mail is killer for the battery unless you are using a Galaxy Note :). So I start developing push based alert system for Android and it was ready in 36 hours. Then comes the WP and iPhone users and I can’t let them out (just for my own sake “programming ka keeda bura hota hai”). So, this is how I started working on this project.
Then comes my first customer, one of my oldest client. What he wanted is to replace SMS based alerts (which he is sending around 1 lakh + on daily basis) with something else. I told him about this project and he transferred a decent amount (for unlimited push license). His monthly saving is over 1 lakh rupees (calculating on current price of SMS in the market) as 15% of his clients have shifted over to this solution.
Please do visit our website at https://pushalerts.znisms.com and give us your valuable feedback about the service (currently available only for Android device holders).
Sorry for my grammar 🙁
Deepak Mittal
Hi Tushar,
While it may be a logical thing to offer for you for your business given the state of affairs for bulk SMS, often spam tainted, industry in India and I appreciate the fact that you’ve gone ahead and offered an alternative which is forward looking, consumer centric and the one that embraces data – the new bearer, perhaps cost efficient and more importantly what might just cannibalize your current business but you stand to gain by transforming well in time. Thumbs up for that.
One suggestion on the API – for your existing clients, you should offer a parameter for backward bearer compatibility – i.e. an SMS Push on an MSISDN that doesn’t have this app installed or running – if the parameter is set by the vendor and who maintains an account, you deliver the message over standard SMS after all your standard validations. This will allow your existing customers to migrate gradually without worrying about the delivery or adoption of the client app.
On another note, It may be inappropriate to say that an app can today challenge or change the “SMS Technology”, which is a native telecom bearer, is available by default with near 100% telco customer base across the globe, networks and handsets today, The networks give special importance to it and have core network components, interworks between GSM/3G and CDMA seemlessly. Perhaps the single most important reason shall be its omnipresence, interoperability and native handset availability. In the history of client apps, the biggest challenge has always been that of distribution – fundamentally it is the challenge of discovery, compatibility and standardization, ease of use and availability when one is willing or most likely to install. Companies like Affle have attempted to offer an improved SMS client app in the past. For the masses, a complex legacy app, such as the SMS native interface in a device is sometimes more easy to use than a new app logically offering a comparatively easy interface. New adoptions for utility or primary use cases have to overcome the “habit” barrier or must have enough (like cost/ease benefits like whatsapp) to appeal to certain group/class of users. –
An app over data can at best serve a few SMS use cases, a generic one such as yours that of simple messaging, a custom app can even be better for certain other use cases of monitoring etc. with business logic, graphs and representation in a much more meaningful manner for the specific use case. Thats a given. Your may consider avatar-izing your generic messaging app with specific use-case features for developers/support use cases or other use cases for which you have existing clients, based on the title of your post which is what your primary position seems to be, this should be a definite plus.
I still wonder that an Android or an IOS could easily have built a messaging app replica with data as its bearer, but all they left the OS with was an enabler for such apps and the push notification framework, perhaps a logical thing for an OS maker to do. I am still not sure if there were any legal or contractual challenges for it with them, or did they fear that the Telco’s would stop selling their handsets for eating away their SMS revenues?
Coming back, For the recipient, running an app that registers a service to keep the Push Notification Framework alive is not without cost, the change of economics has a lot of implications for or against the adoption of a new ecosystem, as you also mentioned, data/gprs needs to be there which isn’t without cost. Also, most of the push notification frameworks periodically send a keep-alive heartbeat to keep even the long-lived TCP/IP connection alive and in that respect bound by the protocol limitations. As far as I know, even on a cheapest pay per go gprs plan, it will cost 10p per such heart-beat. The recipient devices must therefore have a volume data pack. That changes a lot for me in present data scenario, as against the earlier situation where recipient can be a low end handset.
Bijumon Janardhanan
Great Job. I assume you are using Google Cloud Messaging technology to do this. You have simplified it and anybody who dont need to learn the complex technolgy ,this can be a perfect solution.
We are trying to use GCM in our SmartGardTAB product to avoid expensive SMS fateway. We like to integrate your solution if you are willing to provide your app source. We need to customize that app to do some other functionalities like send back message to GCM for controlling equipments. (
http://www.smartgardtab.com
smartgardtab.blogspot.in
http://www.facebook.com/SmartGardTAB
We may need an API to do the registration as well.
It took some time to deliver the first message
Tushar Bhargava
Dear Deepak,
Thanks for your valuable feedback. This app is actually not here to replace SMS service for that there are many like whatsapp, facebook messenger, nimbuzz etc. What we are trying to do is to give an alternative to SMS based push alerts to same set of users.
As in our case when ever somebody register on our website my sales team get a pushAlert on their device with customer contact details. This was previously done through SMS but now is replace with pushAlert app.
Yes, it is not free but its way to cheaper than SMS. We are trying to take advantage of existing data packs customers are using and as far as data usage is concerned its around 300 KB for 20000 alerts (not bad, I think).
Tushar Bhargava
Dear Bijumon,
Thanks for your feedback, unfortunately we are not willing to sell its source as we are building a complete platform on it, which includes almost all smartphone OS available in the market today.
BTW with GCM you can not send message from an app as it is only designed to push message to apps.