We've been working on upgrading our payment system so that it's integrated with the ClearSMS application.  This means that you don't have to go through the external cart to buy credits. 

We'll it took 3 times the amount of time we had expected (banks are ruthless), but we're finished.  This reminds me of a post I had read a while back from a Web start-up, that they had spent more time writing the payment system than the actual product.  I said to myself - no way! I don't believe it...

One of the most popular uses of sending bulk SMS text messages is for marketing your service or products.  Here are some tips to help you get started.

• Don’t be obtrusive - Send your message during the right time of day.  You don’t want people waking up in the middle of the night from the beep-beep of your message.
• Know your audience - Whether they’re young hip-hop or Gothic teens, middle-aged entrepreneurial women, or health and sporting enthusiasts.
• Be relevant - Entrepreneurial women may not necessarily be interested in the newest cookbook of recipes from the Mediterranean steppes.
• Be concise - Just because you can use up to 160 characters in a text message, it doesn’t mean you HAVE to use them all.  
• Provide value – Give your recipient something they may not have otherwise found at the local 7-eleven.
• Discounts count – Users will be much more receptive and responsive to special offers and reduced prices.

Following these guidelines doesn’t mean you can’t be creative in your campaign strategy.  Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes, get to know your audience, and if you’re not a 16 year old Gothic teen, go to a club where they hang out - and mingle. 

As you may have noticed on our Web site, the sign-up procedure for a new account is automatic and instantaneous.

On the other hand, requesting a custom logo takes about two days, and the approval process for buying credits takes about half a day.  Why?
 
We are very cautious about m-spam and we require these manual steps to ensure that our users are serious and also willing to agree to our anti-spam policy.

This helps keep ClearSMS fast, safe and secure.

We've just finished tuning the SMS relay engine.  Even though ClearSMS is simple to use, under the hood, it's pretty complex.

We adjusted the load balancing so that even if you're sending millions of messages, they'll get there reliably.  For international users, we minimized the encoding length, so that no matter what language you're using, the available words are optimized.

One thing we didn't touch was the user interface.  It's actually very cool... except maybe for the colors.  Kyriakos designed it, and we don't want to hurt his feelings, but somebody's got to break the news to him.  

We'll keep you posted.

We've just launched ClearSMS, and we're excited.  We've got stories to tell, but maybe we'll leave it for another blog.  The important thing is the product, and you.

It took a lot of work to develop the software.  So people ask, "How many things can it do?"  The answer; it does one thing, and it does it well.  "How about the features?" As few as possible.  Why? because the longer the list of features Web software has, the more cumbersome, unproductive and slow it is. 

We're proud of ClearSMS, it's fast, it's smooth, it's easy-to-use.  But that doesn't mean anything if it can't help your business.  We think it can.