Description
When a new token is created, we want to send an SMS to the mobile number which was given. This SMS would have a link to the token status page, this will allow the person to know the live status while he is waiting, mainly the number waiting in front of him:
Hi <name>,
You have been added to <queue-name>.
Live status: <token-status-link>.
Token number: <token-number>.
AWS SNS
AWS SNS lets you send SMS worldwide, and and their pricing is as follows (converted to Rupees):
| Country | Price per SMS |
|---|---|
| USA | Rs 0.47 |
| UK | Rs. 2.86 |
| India | Rs 1.60 |
| UAE | Rs. 2.83 |
| Random Other Country (Ukraine) | Rs. 8.57 |
If we adhere to some India specific regulations which might require us to be a registered company, and also might require us to pay an additional registration fee (₹5900) then we can send SMS in India for Rs. 0.20.
Direct Integration With SMS Service Providers
We can integrate with an SMS service provider, whose API we can call to trigger the SMS. Integration is very easy, you just have to set up an account, pay as per their plan. A random example service I found for India is TextLocal
@akashkbaburajan was exploring this, and I think we will need to be registered as a company to send transactional SMSes.
Companion App to Send SMS
We could also let the queue owner install and set up a SimplQ companion app on his mobile phone to send SMSes in the background. This was discussed here.
Other thoughts
- Except in case of the companion app, SMS is a paid resource that we cannot leave open on a public site without protecting it, otherwise someone might use it to spam others or will simply consume our quota. We can get around this by allowing only logged in users to enable SMS, and if they want to send more that a certain amount of SMS, they would have to contact us offline and we can increase their limit.
- We would integrate multiple providers and use the best one per each region. Also we should enable SMS as a feature only for certain regions (for example, enabling SMS for Ukraine is very costly). So we might end up using AWS for UK and US, while another service like TextLocal for India etc.
- If the companion app is feasible, we can offload this responsibility to the user, and also keep the platform free for ever. We could always do all.
But SMS does seem like a good feature to have, from a product perspective.
Activity