What is Gumband? What can you do with it? Behold, the answers to all of these questions and more!

What is Gumband?

Gumband is an API that allows your applications to send and receive SMS messages. This isn't an email to SMS gateway or some other quasi-solution. Gumband lets you send and receive SMS messages over a real shortcode just like the big boys without the big cost. We give you 2 free keywords and 100 test messages to try things out.

How does it work?

With Gumband you register a keyword on the 25252 shortcode. Whenever someone sends a message with your keyword to 25252, we forward it on to an endpoint that you define. Your endpoint will receive the mobile phone number and provider of the person that sent the message as well as the message. Your endpoint can then do anything that it wants with that information, including sending an SMS back to the user using Gumband.

How much does it cost?

You can create a Gumband account with two keywords and 100 test messages for free and with no obligation whatsoever. After that we offer extremely competitive rates based on the volume of messages that you send. Check out our full pricing details.

Where does Gumband work?

Right now a keyword that you register with Gumband will only work in the US. We're working on expanding into other countries.

What do I need to do on my end?

The requirements on your end are pretty basic. The endpoint that you define needs to be a URL that is publicly accessible and it must be able to parse HTTP GET parameters. Beyond that, it's up to you and what you want your application to do. You can develop your endpoint with any language or framework that you would like. Since the endpoint does need to be publicly accessible, we pass in a checksum made up of the URL parameters and a pass phrase that you define so that you can be sure that the message is from us.

Sending SMS messages is easy too. This time you'll be hitting a Gumband endpoint and passing in the message to send, the carrier and phone number of the recipient, your keyword and your checksum.

Once you create an account you'll have access to lots of example code for sending and receiving messages.