SMS Messaging from a Web Site

[fwerginz]

I did a quick search to see if this topic has been discussed already but didn't find anything. My apologies if this is redundant.

I'm looking for a way to send text messages to cell phones from a web site. Programmatically, that isn't difficult since there are a few OpenSource API's available. But, what I need is a SMS Gateway service provider. I've been able to find several that charge a fee for "x" number of messages but I'm wondering if there's a better (a.k.a. free) solution. When googling "free sms gateway" there are a lot of hits but most that I looked at seem a bit shady. It's hard to tell if those free providers will end up keeping the phone numbers and sending spam.

If anyone has any experience, I'd be grateful if you could share.

Thanks.

[charlesgan]

you will need to provide us your mobile provider.
Usually they have a smsc that can accept email.

you can format the email and send to yournumber@yourprovider
222222222@yourmobileprovider.com

[fwerginz]

Thank you for the reply Charles. I probably should have elaborated a bit in my original post. The site I have in mind is a tracking service. That is, someone comes to the site and enters shipment information. The request is forwarded to the host system of the carrying party and the result is displayed back to the user. As an option, I want to let people enter their cell phone number so if/when the status changes, the new information can be sent to them.

The issue is that I won't know which service provider the phone number belongs to. Also, this is an international service so the actual provider might be a company on the other side of the planet.

There are some internet services that will front-end the calls so by sending them the number and the content, they put the message "on the air" so to speak. These services can be expensive so I'm trying to find one that won't cost more than my own service makes.