What is email to SMS?

One of the most popular ways of sending SMS messages for businesses is to send them from email - but how.

Well, there are a couple of ways of doing it. The first is to setup your email so that when you start a new email you address the message to the number at the SMS providers domain.

So for example that could be 0412345678@esendex.net - then simply type your message into either the subject line of the email, or the main body. You could do both, however what generally will happen is the text in the subject line will just sit on top of the text in the main body of the message.

The way you would set it up would be to either set up a new email account (and the provider should be able to give you the details required and step by step guide) on your PC, or in the mail server. What happens here is like what happens when you send a normal email, you're sending through your user name and password details to authenticate against - allow you to send messages.

Another way would be using a reverse setup, meaning that you give your SMS provider the email address you're sending from and the IP address, and the messages are authenticated against that.

Both ways are good, if you're not setting it up on a mail server, I think the second option is better personally, because the first way, when you send a message, you'll need to select the mail account you want to use, and if you're like me then more often than not you'll forget to do it, and the message will fail.

With that said, email software providers like Microsoft are building in SMS messengers into their applications, so that you enter in the details (again the SMS provider should be able to give you that information and a guide to do it) and you use that.

I've tried it with the new Outlook, and it's pretty easy to set up if you have instructions and the right information, the only problem I have with it though it that I can't seem to get a button for "New SMS" like you get with the email, but other than that it's actually good.

The last way would be to use a plug in provided by the SMS provider - we have a small application called PC SMS. It's really really basic, and always say to clients that if I had to get my mum to send messages, this is how I'd do it. Because it's just that simple. Sure the functionality is super limited, but for straight out sending it's great and fits the bill more often than not.

In some ways I'd really like to see it get preferential treatment by the development team to come up with a new version that had some bells and whistles, but really it does the job you're looking for - bearing in mind that what you want to do will ultimately determine how you use it and what platform you decide to go with, i.e. email SMS, web SMS, and so on.

So to come back to the opening question of what is email SMS - put simply it about allowing your email either by sending straight from an email message or via a plug in to send out a message via SMS.