Date: 10/13/07 (PHP Community)    Keywords: web

I'd like to set up a service that sends SMS's to my customers, and is capable of receiving messages back from them (i.e. replies for invitations). I've tried a bunch, but I can't seem to find a reasonable service. Can someone recommend a good one (for the USA)?

Here are services I tried: 
1) Teleflip. Free, but reliability is terrible. 
2) SimpleWire. Want $800 to set up an evaluation license.
3) Clickatell.com wants $1700/month for a shortcode, and says that without a shortcode, there's no way to get 2-way messaging in the US with them. 
4) SMSXchange.com is almost, almost perfect - everything works, no crazy setup fees... Just the messages that they receive from the cell phones can be in no way correlated to what was sent in the original message (i.e. I dont' know which invitation my user is responding to - there can be several outstanding invitations per user). 

Any advice? 

(x-post webdev) 

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/php/589883.html