# Allowing a VPS/Dedicated server to receive SMS text messages ?



## eva2000 (Jun 5, 2015)

Never dealt with sms text on linux servers, but was wondering if there's any service/software that would allow VPS/dedicated server to receive a specific SMS text message and then based on that SMS text message run a certain action/task ?

Or anything close ? 

cheers

George


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## DomainBop (Jun 5, 2015)

You'll need a phone number assigned to your application and phone service...

There are paid services like Cisco's Tropo that allow you to develop applications that will receive SMS messages:

https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/quickstarts/receiving-text-messages.

Twilio should allow you to do the same thing too.  There's an example here:

https://holtstrom.com/michael/blog/post/493/Receive-SMS-Text-Message.html


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## eva2000 (Jun 5, 2015)

wow thanks Twilio looks like what I need


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## trewq (Jun 5, 2015)

Nexmo is also another good option.


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## willie (Jun 5, 2015)

There are email to SMS gateways and I think there are also likely some SMS to email provided by phone companies.

I have a few phone numbers with vitelity.com that can receive SMS and can surely be forwarded to a VPS somehow (through SIP if necessary), but I haven't looked into doing that due to not having needed it.


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## telephone (Jun 5, 2015)

eva2000 said:


> wow thanks Twilio looks like what I need


Tropo is free for development. As long your usage is small scale, there's no need to pay  .

Both Twilio and Tropo have webhooks built-in, so you just need a callable script (PHP, Python, etc). From there, you can use an if/else or switch/dictionary block to trigger your pre-made commands.


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## icy (Jun 5, 2015)

You would need an API to do this and the API should be provided by your SMS gateway or service provider. 

To carry out your desired functions, then of course you might need a simple PHP script or an application that would handle it.

As others recommended, Twilio is a good option.


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## PureVoltage (Jun 6, 2015)

You should be able to setup some type of mail server on the box for this type of thing.

I know we've used boxes to send SMS messages however haven't tried it the otherway. However SMS is pretty much just an email most phone companies it's your number @ att.mobile.com something on the lines of that.

Guess it depends if you want a paid service already made that you can add a script to easy or not.

Years ago we had one that would email us if disk usage on our SSD nodes hit xx%. Would be awesome to send a SMS and have the box do different tasks.


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## eva2000 (Jun 6, 2015)

cheers guys lots of options and info to look at


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## cociu (Jun 7, 2015)

i thinck clickatel have something similar


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