Koha Question of the Week: Why Have Email to SMS Notices Become Unreliable?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Jun 14, 2024

Each Friday, we will bring you a new Koha Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: Why Have Email to SMS Notices Become Unreliable?

Answer: Koha's built-in option to send SMS notices via email gateway has become less reliable over time as providers like T-Mobile and Verizon have started removing access to the ability for anyone to send email to SMS numbers for free. Most libraries are moving towards using a 3rd party service for this functionality, and in our experience, it has been much more reliable to utilize a product intended for that purpose. Libraries are generally happier with the outcomes, with the small increase in cost more than made up for by more reliable SMS messaging.

We are recommending that partners look into a dedicated SMS messaging service like Twilio, RedOxygen, Shoutbomb, or Patron Point, to name a few, rather than using Koha’s built-in SMS feature. As always, feel free to reach out to our partner mailing list or ByWater partner Slack community to trade recommendations with other partner libraries.

In order to provide a quote, third-party services like this will often ask how many messages a library currently sends out, so here is a report to help identify that:

select count(*), status 
from message_queue 
where message_transport_type='sms' and date(time_queued) between
<<Between|date>> and <<and|date>>
group by status

Additional Resources

Koha Question of the Week: How Does Twilio Work with Koha?

Monday Minutes: Suppressing SMS Transport of Specific Notices in Koha

When Two Notices is Too Many