SMS to Email

SMS to email is a service offered by Ozeki SMS Gateway. It works by converting sms messages received from mobile phones into emails. Email users doing their daily messaging with email clients can communicate with mobile users thanks to this service. This step-by-step guide explains how you can install and configure Ozeki SMS Gateway to act as an sms to email gateway.

What is sms to email

SMS to email is a message gateway service provided by Ozeki SMS Gateway. It allows you to forward text messages sent from mobile phones to email addresses. (Figure 1)

How can I send SMS to Email (video)

The following video shows the setup procedure needed to install and configure an SMS gateway that can provide sms to email functionality. The whole procedure can be done in less then 3 minutes. What you will see can be summed up in 3 steps:

To explain the sms to email procedure in 3 steps:

1. Connect Ozeki SMS Gateway to the mobile network
2. Configure an sms to email route
3. Send an sms from a mobile and read it in your email client

The video starts at clicking on the SMS Gateway desktop icon and takes you all the way to sending a test SMS from a mobile phone and receiving it in the e-mail client.

How does sms to email work

The sms to email solution requires a connection to the mobile network. Using this connection text messages are received by the sms gateway. The sms gateway first converts these texts into e-mail and assigns a sender and recipient e-mail address to them. You can configure these email address on the Ozeki SMS Gateway user interface. During the format conversion, the message text is placed into the E-mail subject line or into the E-mail body depending on configuration.

After the SMS was converted into e-mail, the e-mail is forwarded by the SMS gateway to an email server. The SMTP protocol is used to communicate with the email server. To read the email, you have to login to your email server and check your inbox. Depending on your system, you can login using a web interface to check your email, or you can download the email messages using POP3 or IMAP.

This is how sms to email works in a nutshell (Figure 2).

Detailed instructions to setup sms to email forwarding

To send sms to email:

1. Go to ozeki-sms-gateway.com
2. Download Ozeki 10 SMS Gateway
3. Setup the downloaded installation package
4. Navigate to https://localhost:9515
5. Connect to the mobile network
6. Select 'IMAP client'; IMAP/SMTP provides sms to email
7. Click install
8. Enter the email login details
9. Type in the email address where the SMS should be sent to
10. Create a route to forward sms to the email client
11. Send a test SMS from your mobile
12. View the sms in your email client

How to connect your sms to email gateway to the mobile network

In order to forward sms to email, you need to connect your SMS gateway to the mobile network. Ozeki SMS Gateway can be connected in quite-a-few ways. All of these to methods allows you to send and receive text messages. The best option for your environment depends on the number of sms messages you wish to send and receive. For sms volumes up to 12 000 text messages per day, the best option is to use a GSM modem or an android sms gateway setup. The advantage of this option is that you don't have to subscribe for a costly on-line SMS service. The android sms gateway setup uses your standard android mobile phone as an sms to email gateway. Incoming sms messages received by this phone will be forwarded as email and if you use an email to sms setup you text messages will be sent out through this phone. In this setup your sms gateway communicates with the network using the Android mobile phone. This communication is the same as the communication of a human user, so it means you can take advantage of free unlimited sms sending options.

For higher SMS volumes you can switch to online SMS services, which means you will send SMS messages over the Internet. When you use on-line SMS service providers you can use a dedicated SMS protocol or an SMS API. There are various SMS protocols out there: SMPP protocol, CIMD2 protocol, UCP/EMI protocol and there are many proprietary protocols based on HTTP. Protocols based on HTTP are called HTTP SMS APIs. The best option to connect to on-line SMS services is to use an SMPP connection. The SMPP protocol is widely used in the SMS industry. It is used by mobile network operators to exchange SMS traffic between each other. SMPP was designed for SMS, and it gives you high performance, instant access to submit and delivery reports and precise time stamps related to SMS delivery. So, choose SMPP if possible.

Add new user

You have to add a new user in Ozeki SMS Gateway to start working. E-mail Users can be easily installed and configured through the browser GUI of Ozeki SMS Gateway. So first, open the SMS Gateway, look for the Users and applications panel in the right-hand side and click on the Add new user/application link (Figure 3).

Install IMAP Client

In the Add user or application list, scroll down to the E-mail clients install section, and like in Figure 4, select IMAP client item by clicking on Install. This allows you to have an IMAP client in the connection, which is a really fast and efficient email protocol.

Provide the SMTP server settings

SMTP is an internet standard for email transmission. SMTP servers are used for relaying outgoing emails. On the From section provide the default sender address and make sure the emails are sent to the correct address. In the textboxes you can set the default recipient name and address. On the SMTP server section, please enter the SMTP server's IP address or domain and the port number as you can see in the Figure 5. In case your SMTP server requires authentication, provide the username and password. You can also choose SSL connection if your SMTP server has a more secure connection.

Configure routing

To configure SMS routing, you need to open the routing table by clicking on the "Routes" toolbar button and select the route which you want to configure. (Highlighted in Figure 6)

Check that the message is received in the SMS connection

In the Events tab of the SMPP client you can see when an SMS arrives, it is forwarded to the IMAP client. The notes in the event log give information about the date, exact time, the used client and a detailed description about the event. You can switch on/off auto update, delete or refresh the log's content in the right-hand side, using the proper buttons. (Highlighted in Figure 7)

Make sure that the SMS is sent as an e-mail

Finally, in the Events tab you can see that the SMS arrived on this SMTP client, and it is forwarded to the recipient's email address. Check the event log regularly in order to be up-to-date about the events in the connection. The helpful event notes help you to understand everything in this process. (Shown in Figure 8)

Check your inbox

Go to your inbox and you can open the letter that was sent from this connection. You can check the sender's details here to make sure that you set everything as you wanted. If you are satisfied with everything in your test message, it means that you are ready to use this solution. (Figure 9)

Summary

In this guide we showed you how to forward SMS messages to an email account using Ozeki SMS Gateway. This solution makes the communication easier between mobile users and Email users. Follow the steps carefully, download Ozeki SMS Gateway and you will have the tools and knowledge to convert SMS into Emails. This innovation enables cross platform communication to your company which will help you to grow bigger and work faster.

Continue exploring this topic by reading our other guides, like Email to SMS - POP3 and Email to SMS - Postfix.

Your next thing to do is to download Ozeki SMS Gateway and start working!