In the era, where SMS marketing has become an important part of Mobile Marketing marketers are highly in need of best bulk SMS services at affordable prices. Aggregators are also in search for a smart solution to cater to the requirements of clients and other business owners. However, these days many leading gateway providers have launched SMPP and Restful API to do bulk SMS marketing easier, time-saving and effective.

In today’s article I am going to tell, what is SMPP services and API? Which is best for you?

Short message peer-to-peer (SMPP) is an application layer TCP/IP protocol used for exchanging text SMSes between Short Message Service Centers (SMSC) and External Short electronic communication Entities (ESME). It’s the quality protocol for SMS communication that permits quick delivery of SMS messages. SMPP Provider services are highly recommended for those business organizations who have a large volume of SMS consumption means more than 5000+ in a day. It is highly popular among telecommunication agencies and other aggregators like SMS Gateway. The working of SMPP is somehow different from the normal SMS gateway interfaces but yeah it assures timely delivery of messages even in case of high volumes. Some powerful SMPP protocols support 3000TPS which is more than your expectation.

On the other hand, API (Application Programming Interface) may be a set of functions and procedures that permit the creation of applications that access the options of a platform. Unironic API’s runs over HTTPS/TLS.

Before we talk about the Restful API? Know properly about the API. It is the programming interface, a group of protocols and routines for building the third-party software application. It enables the functionalities of one app to another, just like a copy and paste. But today, these APIs are customized as per the type of the website.

For example, The REST API style highlight that interactions between users and services are enhanced by a limited number of operations. The high amount of flexibility is even provided by allowing resources their URLs because each API (GET, POST) has a specific operation, REST avoids ambivalence.

The major differences between these two are-

Setup Time- SMPP Server takes more time to set up and test. As it requires some hours to integrate with your existing systems. When it comes to API, it will take a few seconds. Normally, SMS gateway providers give you multiple languages API for easy implementation.

Complexity- If you use SMPP you have to do the whole configuration to test all scenarios. Normally API gateway provider handles all complexity with an ease. You will get a simple API interface to interact with your targeted customers.

Throughput- SMPP usually has higher throughput, you don’t need to ask for the throughput with SMS provider. In the REST API, you required multi-threading to enhance throughput capacity. You need to do a lot of customization to get the same throughput as just like SMPP.

DLR- If you are using SMPP connection you can push DLR directly as received but in REST you need to configured a webhook URL to get DLR of sent messages.

So, make a wise decision before beginning with the SMS marketing services. SMPP is generally for a high volume of messages however, APIs comes for software or website integration.