Ask HN: Is there demand for an email as text messages service? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there demand for an email as text messages service?

1 pointrcavezza6 comments

Here's my situation: I spend around $40-$50 extra a month for unlimited email access when I already receive free text messages. If I set up an email to text service, I can save money. I think other people can to.

I'm probably going to build this for myself anyway - but any thoughts of rolling this out as a full business?

I found a company that has a free text message api, but puts ads on the end of the text.

Is this a good idea for a business? Is someone already doing it? (that would save me time)

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I spend around $40-$50 extra a month for unlimited email access when I already receive free text messages.

i think for the vast majority of users, it's the complete opposite. free email through something like gmail, and a 200-500 sms/month plan.

what are you using that costs $40-50 a month for email? i provide secure imap service for my business customers and occasionally get complaints that $15/month per mailbox is too expensive.

I pay $40-$50 per month to allow internet usage on my Blackberry which is required to receive the blackberry email feed from my gmail account.

It would be viable as an app if it abstracted away the 140 character limit of sms. I don't think people are going to be willing to deal with the annoyance of sending emails as multiple sms messages

I'm thinking it will send subject line of 4 or 5 recent email messages - each message has an idea #, text that id # back to the server, and it gives you the first 140, text back read more, and it texts back another 140 - would this solve it?

Personally, I think USSD would be a better way to implement this. However, it seems the mobile carriers want to keep USSD to themselves. The 140 char limit in SMS is a somewhat arbitrary limit in the GSM specs that we are no stuck with. Nevertheless, your solution (using id numbers) does seem quite clever but if this is going over a premium rate service then the SMS's will no longer be free.

This is a bit better, but still a real pain. What about sending email?

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