this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Twilio Alternatives? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by hostedbyjake@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Hi all,

Looking for some advice for a cheaper Twilio alternative. For context,

I developed a site for my family that's in medicine, it texts her patients their daily dose of whatever their protocol is set to on her website. It's been a staple with her patients now as the doses can be a lot to remember. We are currently using twilio, but with hundreds of patients each getting texts every day, the cost is starting to add up.

I bought an android phone, and an extra phone plan, and set up an SMS gateway there but got banned from the mobile provider after a day of sending the text alerts. Was optimistic about that plan and the cost savings, did not expect such a rapid ban like that.

Any way I can keep the cost down for this that isn't Twilio?

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[–] throw4w4y5@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

what about Amazon SNS? i believe it’s $0.50 for one million sms messages

[–] aimecyuzuzo@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Might find infobid a good option.

[–] emprezario@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Which provider did you use and what sms gateway? Zender?

[–] rrrmmmrrrmmm@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

You're probably looking for Fonoster

[–] rrrmmmrrrmmm@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Fonoster is planning to become a Twilio alternative.

They don't have SMS support yet however.

[–] tankerkiller125real@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Telnyx, they're very well known, and they run their own network (so it's extremely stable) and it's pretty cheap. Plus you can use Hosted SMS if you want to add SMS capabilities to existing numbers, even land line numbers.

[–] dazchad@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Twilio charges less than a cent for each message. A hundred messages is 79c. I’d be surprised to find any other solution that is dramatically cheaper. On AWS it would be 58c.

Those prices are in US, but I would be surprised if those services weren’t competitive in other markets.

[–] desnudopenguino@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Have you talked to someone at twilio about a high volume discount?

[–] Emi_Be@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

SIGNL4 can be considered as an alternative to Twilio. It's a mobile alerting platform. Typically there are other use cases, it's primarily focused on incident management and team communication, but it could potentially be used for sending text alerts or push notifications to patients as well. I guess it also depends on your exact budget and how old the patients are as they would need to download an app.