When do you choose SMPP?

There’s a lot of talk about SMPP and how suitable it is for SMS text messaging, but how do you really know if it’s the SMS messaging protocol for you?

The Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol, more commonly referred to as SMPP, is the subject of great discussion on the internet, especially within technical and/or programming circles. It’s a robust protocol capable of transmitting messages at a rapid rate. It’s reliable too. But does that mean you have to use it? Maybe not – let’s see how SMPP compares to other available API’s:

Let’s examine the table above:

SMPP

Although there is much more to SMPP, the above can assist the decision making process. First off we note that it has a minimum messaging requirement of at least 5,000 credits a month. These credits can either be used locally or internationally, but they must be used.

Next up we look at the required technical level and programming skills – both of which is labelled as ‘Advanced’. SMPP is a protocol that, unlike FTP and HTTP/S, requires its own application to be written in most cases. While prewritten SMPP applications do exist, they are more often than not rather difficult to operate successfully if the technical aspects of SMPP have not been fully understood.

And finally, as with all protocols, SMPP is platform independent. This means that it will run as well on Windows as it will on Linux, UNIX and even Mac – depending on the programming involved, of course.

FTP

As with SMPP, FTP is also a protocol, though one that’s present by default in most modern operating systems and is used to upload and download files to and from specific locations on the internet. And as a result of its popularity, most web browsers support it along with millions of applications specifically designed to facilitate file transfer using the FTP protocol (which is also the reason why virtually no programming and/or technical skills are needed).

Note: It is recommended that FTP batches not exceed 10,000 messages and that file sizes stay within the 50,000 message limit.

HTTP/S

As with SMPP and FTP, HTTP/S is also a protocol and maybe THE most easily recognisable, even by non-technical users. I’ll say that again – most easily recognisable – because virtually everyone who has surfed the web before will have encountered it before, e.g. http://www.clickatell.com. But that’s where it stops – you don’t need any wizard programming skills to make use of the HTTP/S API, but an intermediate-to-advanced level of HTML will help to make decent use of this API.

Also keep in mind that the recommended maximum as opposed to FTP and SMPP, is in the vicinity of 10,000 messages. Although more can be sent, it becomes a bit impractical, especially when more than one connection is used.

Conclusion

Use SMPP when you’ll be sending at least 5,000 message credits’ worth each month and only when you have the necessary technical and programming expertise at hand to integrate this robust little protocol into your current software environment.

If you’d like to know more, simply navigate to our SMPP page.

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Tags: FTP API, HTTP/S API, Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol, SMPP, SMPP API, SMS application programming interface