Features Of A Good Bulk sms Platform
a. Ability to personalize the sender i.e. your name instead of number showing as sender
b. Instant Delivery or
c. Differed delivery i.e. message scheduling, you can set up the message to deliver at a later date or to deliver every day or every week or every year e.g birthdays.
d. History of all message sent can easily be retrieved
e. Account balance is always visible
f. Messages will not be sent if the phone number is incomplete or inactive; a error message will notify you of this.
g. Messages can be sent to multiple addresses from excel(.xls) or notepad(.txt) up to 100,000 numbers at once
h. Telephone numbers can be saved on the web through the creation of a web address book
i. Worldwide Coverage
j. No Expiry/Time Period
k. A good and responsive customer support system
l. Good providers also have a gsm database that you can use to start of campaigns.
If you want to start a bulk sms business as a retailer or as a reseller always make sure that at least all the features above (a-j) are offered by the provider you choose to go with.
The advice above is critical to your success in the bulk sms business. Some providers lure you with apparently cheap rates but have terrible support services or may not even have effective delivery systems.
Poor providers may lure you with low sms rates but what you may not know is that up to 30%of the sms sent are either not delivered or delayed for variable duration of time.
The reason some of the these poor providers can charge such low rates is because they derive their gate way from some inefficient Asian countries.
In our experience, the most reliable sms gateways are the ones based in Europe. We started out with the Asian gateways but we have since learned our lessons the hard way. This is not to say there are no credible Asian gateways but as a beginner please start with a reliable Nigerian provider that uses an European gateway.
The banks and other financial institutions largely use European gateways for their alerts and notification sms system because it is critical for them to deliver immediately transactions take place.
The platform we work with is www.smsbenin,com it uses multiple gateways to ensure that there is NEVER a down time and this is because www.smsbenin.com have several financial institutions using their gateway.
There are several other credible sms gateway platforms, but you need to do your research and ensure that you are on the right platform to ensure the success of your business.
Good luck in your quest for success
Cash4naija Team
