Commercial background
AXLR8 have provided text messaging services as part of our staffing product line and many other applications for around 15 years. Every now and again, a supplier goes bust. This provides us with a challenge and expenses of migration to another supplier and rebuilding portals, learning how to deal with the “quirks” of the new supplier. You understand. You have your own supply chain challenges!
It is just an impression but SMS unit platforms and their wholesale channels seem to be running on very low margins. Several may be”running on empty”.
Prevention
We learned from the upheaval and expense of suppliers going bust or simply not providing the service our clients need. Smaller suppliers came with flexibility but also risks. We chose a supplier who was too big to fail (part of Cisco) with great service. That seems to have worked for ten years!
We also increased volumes with them to obtain discounts that we could pass on to clients. Then we invested heavily in their system so our clients could log in on our white-labelled portal (HTTPS://sms.axlr8.com) to view traffic and control their account.
Regrettably, the platform supplier has been rolled into another part of Cisco.
Actions now
The supplier we have used for ten years will cease to provide the service by the end of November.
So AXLR8 have procured another text supplier and have added more details about how you can migrate onto this new SMS service. We narrowed it down to two. eSendex an WebexInteractive. In the end, we went with Webex because they undertook to take over client account balances for unused SMS units
An AXLR8 FAQ explains how this works. It will be published when we have agreed it with all parties concerned.
Other suppliers
AXLR8 can help you integrate if you register with another supplier. You must make sure the supplier has all the features you require.
- Dedicated telephone number for sending. Also, you may need the ability to deal with replies to text messages
- Email2SMS facility whereby a message can be sent from you to <phone-number-of-recipient>@<service-domain>
- Supports a protocol compatible with AXLR8
You will also need AXLR8’s managed service for SMS messaging.
Other alternatives
Other Media: Remember, that AXLR8 can provide many ways in which you can contact staff, clients, users and other stakeholders.
- AXLR8 Chat
- Newsletters
- Trigaware(tm)
There are risks in using watsapp.
MFA
There are alternatives to using SMS messages for 2FA. The simplest is to use email. There are also authenticator apps. Please let us knw if you would like to drop SMS altogether as a service.
Please check out the FAQ here and call AXLR8 Support if you have any problems.