Sending outgoing SMS - test results
Betamax:
Sending SMS does not work almost at all for the international and US numbers I have tested. I have normal mobile phones with SIM cards and wasn’t able to receive SMS text by sending either from Betamax website or their mobile app. It used it work but I think they no longer develop it, it’s just maintenance mode. Also the URL sending didn’t work at all.
The only success I had is sending SMS to a VOIP number in Canada. That was received, but guess what, it was received as a call and read to me in Text to speech. So my guess this is was a feature they had, if SMS was sent to a lane-line, it would be converted and read by voice.
So overall, Betamax is now total fail when it comes to SMS. It used to work, once.
(By the way, same has Dingtone, they also use Text to speech to landline in the correct language, so if it is a German number, the text to speech would convert the SMS to speech when sending to German land line. That is interesting but that is the only thing interesting about Dingtone, more about them below.)
Betamax calling rates are unbeatable, they are even lower than Flynumner rates, some regions they are dirt cheap for mobile plus they have free calling to landlines.
LocalPhone
Sending SMS works! It actually works reliably well, sometimes with delay, but it does work!
The issue is however, Call ID for sent text mostly does not work. I was only able to display the call ID when sending from a Canadian number (mobile number) to one of international numbers (mobile number), otherwise it shows random numbers or shows some text like InfoSMS or Verify etc. Too bad, because they do allow configuring the Call ID. Mobile app on iOS and Android doesn’t allow sending SMS text, do that I have to go to LocalPhone website. No good.
Dingtone:
They actually work for everything, sending and receiving texts work with their number and cover most countries in the world, however, are expensive, they charge 10 dollars per month for phone number, the prices are hidden in the application, what they show on the website are credits but they don’t tell you actual cost, calling can cost about 0.20 USD, for me it’s 2x Flynumber or Sonetel rates, texting also 0.19 USD. They also charge for receiving call about 0.09 USD and also charge for receiving SMS about 0.16 USD. They also charge for Voicemail in per year fee abuout 3.50 USD. Dingtone is a rip-off. Their app still pushes advertisement, even though you are a paying customer and are subscribed to their phone number, they still expect you to pay another subscription on top of that to remove advertising. What a freakin way of doing business. Also have a 0.07 USD connection fee for calls.
Sonetel - sending SMS doesn’t work for any numbers at this time. Sonetel is similar to Flynumber except they offer the phone system at no charge but it is a bit confusing to setup and they do have still issues with delivery of voicemails but they have transcription included in their phone system too (English).