It all depends on home many messages you're sending. If you're sending in the tens of thousands per month, there are companies that'll pay you to send them for you (and include an ad)
If you're just sending a few, you should send them using an email. The only downside of this method is that you need to know which provider they use, which means either asking the user, or looking it from an expensive DB.
If you do know which provider they have, you can look up the email here
If you don't want to ask, you could use Teleflip, who will do the lookup for you. Just email phonenum@teleflip.com
There was an earlier discussion about this, but we don't have a FSQ [1] or search feature, so I don't blame you for missing it. Take a look at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68227
Hey e1ven. Thank you for those links. I did use searchYc.com to search for sms and text, but did not find those, so I appreciate you sending those my way.
To all those who responded, thanks a lot. I think I will start with the email->sms option, and then to textmarks (that really looks interesting, though if I were to open this out others they might not appreciate me giving their phone number to a third party).
I will be sure to fill you all in when and if this goes anywhere ;-) I certainly don't have $12000 for clickatell and if it comes to that, well, I might just not go public.
If you're just sending a few, you should send them using an email. The only downside of this method is that you need to know which provider they use, which means either asking the user, or looking it from an expensive DB.
If you do know which provider they have, you can look up the email here
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=detail...
If you don't want to ask, you could use Teleflip, who will do the lookup for you. Just email phonenum@teleflip.com
There was an earlier discussion about this, but we don't have a FSQ [1] or search feature, so I don't blame you for missing it. Take a look at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68227
Let us know which way you end up going!
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97491