How to replace Clickatell's service with your own SMS service
Clickatell provides bulk SMS services over HTTP. If your customers are
unhappy with the service they provide, you can provide SMS service to them
through a similar
HTTP SMS API. In this guide we
explain how this can be done.
Setup Ozeki NG to be able to send and receive
In order to provide an SMS service, you need to have
Ozeki NG SMS Gateway installed
on your computer and it should be able to send and receive SMS messages.
The SMS quick start guide explains
the initial configuration steps to
take to setup Ozeki NG for SMS messaging.
Create a user account
Once Ozeki NG is installed you can provide an HTTP SMS service to your
customers in a similar way HTTP SMS providers, such as Clickatell provide a
service. To provide the service to your customer, first you have to
create a standard user account for
your customer. For example you can specify un1 as the username and
pw1 as the password.
Give the HTTP API URL to your customer
Once the standard user account is created, you can give the following HTTP API
url to your customer. This URL can be used instead of the URL provided by
Clickatell:
In this URL replace the ip address 66.77.88.99 to the IP address or the
hostname of the server your Ozeki NG SMS gateway is installed on. You also need
to put the username un1 and the password pw1 into the URL.
Note: The clickatell URL your customer would replace would look like something
this:
Advantages to using Ozeki NG SMS gateway instead of Clickatell
If you use Ozeki NG SMS Gateway instead of a HTTP SMS service, such as the one
provided by Clickatell, you don't have to worry about service provider failures
and performance problems. You can build a redundant, reliable system with
backup
routing and load balancing.
You can also track messages and keep track of costs with the
SQL Logging feature
Ozeki NG SMS Gateway provides. The SQL Logging feature saves a copy of all
outgoing
and incoming messages into a database. This gives you the ability to create
reports.
If your messages are sent and received through Ozeki NG SMS Gateway you have
a much better control of SMS routing. You can use
inbound SMS routing and
outbound SMS routing to control
where your messages end up.
Routing can be done based on telephone number prefix or message content,
such as keywords.