How to Convert Email to SMS
One of the simplest methods of converting your emails to SMS
messages is to make use of an email to SMS gateway. Many SMS
gateway providers offer a simple conversion which allow you to
send through an email to their servers which in turn spits out
an SMS message and delivers it to the various recipients.
In most cases one will first need to setup an account an SMS
gateway provider and then rehash your email into the correct
format such that the server can understand what it must do with
each email. Generally speaking, most providers will offer some
messages with which to test this service. Once these have run
out you will need purchase more messages with them.
One of the world's largest gateway providers, Clickatell, offers
a fairly simple method of achieving this which I will outline
below:
Step 1. Logon to their site www.clickatell.com and find the "sms
gateway" tab. Register for an SMTP (Email to SMS) API account.
Once having done this you will be issued with what is called an
API_ID. In order to convert your emails to SMS you will need the
following bits of information:
1.Username (this you select when registering) 2.Password (this
you select when registering) 3. API_ID (this gets issued to upon
completion of registration) 4. The mobile number/s you would
like to send the message to in international format e.g. a UK
number would look like this: 448311234567 5. The message text
itself e.g. "Meet at pub in 5 minutes"
Step 2. Open your Email client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook), and
open a new email. Make sure the email is in plain text format
and not html. Next, fill in the following details: 1.In the
email address field type in the address
sms@messaging.clickatell.com (this is the address of the
Clickatell server where the message will be converted)
2.Type in your account and message details in the body of the
email laid out exactly as follows:
user:xxxxx password:xxxxx api_id:xxxxx to:448311234567 text:Meet
at pub in 5 minutes
3.Send the email and the message will automatically be sent as
an SMS.
It should be noted that it may cost more or less for certain
messages since some network operators charge more to send
messages to their network than others.