sms_g
Newbie
- Jul 13, 2025
- 13
- 11
We’ve been running valid sms home-service offers for a while now (no scams, nothing shady), but as many of you know, sending through A2P messaging is getting tougher by the day. Providers keep clamping down, and it’s harder and harder to find SMS platforms willing to support our type of messaging.
First things first: what we’re really looking for is a stable, long-term solution. Ideally something that will last at least five years without us needing to constantly jump between providers or rebuild our entire setup.
We’re only looking to send around 15,000 messages per day - not millions - but we want it to be consistent and reliable.
Our current thought process for moving over to GSM looks like this:
1. Buy a GSM machine w. 128-256 sim slots (likely sourced from Asia).
2. Ship it out to a trusted contact in the United States.
3. Secure a steady supply of prepaid SIM cards - possibly through eBay, Amazon, or via a bulk deal with a seller.
4. Set up a connection between our CRM (we run GoHighLevel) and the GSM hardware through SMS-IT.
5. Start sending through the GSM stack instead of traditional A2P routes.
That said, I’m uncertain about how to actually set this up. If we go down the GSM route:
• What are the best SIM cards to get?
• How many messages per day per SIM card can realistically be sent before getting flagged?
• Is it even smart to do this, or should we just stick with A2P?
The issue with A2P is that the people we’re messaging technically haven’t opted in, and to be compliant, they require us to include “STOP to unsubscribe” in the messaging. Because we’re sending to cold traffic, we don’t believe our stop/unsubscribe rate will ever stay below their thresholds if we’re forced to include that line. They also want a brand name in every message, which isn’t ideal for what we’re doing.
Our current provider is fine for now, and we don’t expect issues in the immediate term, but we’d definitely sleep better at night having a backup system like GSM in place.
So the main question: does this make sense as a scaling strategy for the next five years? Or is there a more reliable way to handle bulk messaging without being boxed in by A2P restrictions?
Looking for insights from anyone who’s actually set up a GSM system at scale, or someone who's sending messages to non-opt in without issues.
First things first: what we’re really looking for is a stable, long-term solution. Ideally something that will last at least five years without us needing to constantly jump between providers or rebuild our entire setup.
We’re only looking to send around 15,000 messages per day - not millions - but we want it to be consistent and reliable.
Our current thought process for moving over to GSM looks like this:
1. Buy a GSM machine w. 128-256 sim slots (likely sourced from Asia).
2. Ship it out to a trusted contact in the United States.
3. Secure a steady supply of prepaid SIM cards - possibly through eBay, Amazon, or via a bulk deal with a seller.
4. Set up a connection between our CRM (we run GoHighLevel) and the GSM hardware through SMS-IT.
5. Start sending through the GSM stack instead of traditional A2P routes.
That said, I’m uncertain about how to actually set this up. If we go down the GSM route:
• What are the best SIM cards to get?
• How many messages per day per SIM card can realistically be sent before getting flagged?
• Is it even smart to do this, or should we just stick with A2P?
The issue with A2P is that the people we’re messaging technically haven’t opted in, and to be compliant, they require us to include “STOP to unsubscribe” in the messaging. Because we’re sending to cold traffic, we don’t believe our stop/unsubscribe rate will ever stay below their thresholds if we’re forced to include that line. They also want a brand name in every message, which isn’t ideal for what we’re doing.
Our current provider is fine for now, and we don’t expect issues in the immediate term, but we’d definitely sleep better at night having a backup system like GSM in place.
So the main question: does this make sense as a scaling strategy for the next five years? Or is there a more reliable way to handle bulk messaging without being boxed in by A2P restrictions?
Looking for insights from anyone who’s actually set up a GSM system at scale, or someone who's sending messages to non-opt in without issues.
