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Email Notification via SMS in the US?

Posted by Cliff on from the never-missing-an-important-email dept.

Joel McShiston asks: "Back in Europe I had set up a system through which urgent emails matching certain criteria were automatically forwarded upon arrival to a (free) email account which my cell phone carrier (Vodafone) provided for free with each account - {cell number}@vodafone.es. At the carrier's site I could then turn 'SMS notification of new email' on and would receive a text message telling me to check my email each time a matching email came through. I'll be soon moving to the US and would like to know whether any of you has a similar (or better) system working over there. Which kind of SMS-email 'interfacing' are you able to do on that side of the pond?"

8 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Tmobile by CaNeS · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tmobile does this and has for quite a while.

    It's usually pretty reliable. I've only had problems when my mail server had problems.

  2. Easy if you have your own domain by pauljlucas · · Score: 4, Informative

    See my instructions. While specifically for Verizon, the technique should work for any carrier that supplies you with an e-mail address.

    --
    If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    1. Re:Easy if you have your own domain by fiftyvolts · · Score: 2, Informative

      I didn't give it a good look, but on initial inspection your perl script has potential for some odd display bugs because many of you regex's don't use the zero-width ^ match. Like if you got a message (and I have in the past) formatted "<johnq@public.com> John Q. Public", it'll spit out as "johnq@public.com> John Q. Public".

      If I'm right it doesn't take much to fix :| just do /^([^<]+)/ or whatever instead. Cool proccess though, I'll probably use it :D

      --
      100% Crunchier
  3. .procmailrc by JeffL · · Score: 4, Informative
    There is almost always an e-mail to sms gateway address, such as 5555555555@t-mobile.com (or whatever). I have a .procmailrc that forwards interesting e-mails to my phone. It strips quoted text and other stuff, to squeeze as much as possible into the allowed 160 characters.

    I've been using my phone as a biff for years. If an e-mail is important I know about it right away, if it isn't important I can deal with it later or ignore it completely.

  4. Verizon ... by arhar · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... Verizon, which by far provides the best service in the US, has this feature:

    vtext.com

  5. I don't trust the system by barzok · · Score: 2, Informative

    We use Verizon at work for sending SMS messages to phones for system/on-call notifications. We have had a few occasions where messages have been delayed by anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. We've also had complete outages (average one day/year).

    Depending on how urgently you need to know you've got mail, this may not be acceptable to you.

  6. In the US - consider the costs... by SD_92104 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Considering that the OT comes from Europe, there is a very important thing to add - you will pay for incoming SMS (or have them deducted from your bucket of allowed SMSs - depending on your provider and/or plan). As opposed to Europe (at least the countries I lived in) where all incoming communication is free, you will pay for that in the US - both, for voice as well as SMS. So, depending on your email volume, you might re-think whether this is really worth it... (I use it - T-Mobile customer - and their website allows you to set up rather precise filters for which messages/accounts/senders/... you receive a notification)

    1. Re:In the US - consider the costs... by Mistah+Blue · · Score: 2, Informative

      SMS incoming is free for AT&T Wireless (probably depending on your plan). Send to you_cell_number@mobile.att.net.