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.

Joe Macon writes about a variety of technology topics, with a focus on SMS technology. For Email to SMS he recommends http://www.clickatell.com.

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