Show HN: TextBlast Bulk SMS – Send Personalized Mass Messages Easily | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: TextBlast Bulk SMS – Send Personalized Mass Messages Easily

textblast.learn.uno

8 pointssandoche6 comments

This looked interesting as a way for me to let me friends know about my music gigs without giant group texts.

I installed the app (on iOS) and tried to send a test, got this popup: "TextBlast will open your SMS app for each contact and prefill the message and the contact name, you will have to send and press back after it is sent, the next message will appear."

While I'm sure this is just an unfortunate limitation imposed by iOS on apps, and probably a smart one at that, it also makes it nearly useless for it's proposed use case.

If I have to click two specific small buttons for each message to send, that would be a pretty large amount of work to send even 100 messages. I have a hard time actually considering this "Bulk SMS" or "Sending Mass Messages Easily", the two claims they managed to make in the headline.

Also, minor compared to the first issue, but there is no Search function while adding contacts to a group.

I wonder if the same limitation exist on Android? Also wonder if this can work with Google Voice? What the monetization strategy is? Finally is my contact list safe?

The same limitation appeared recently on the play store (so it's still possible to do in Android if I would publish in alternative store). The monetization is simple: every SMS is sent by your device so the pricing is the pricing of your network provider. Also if you want to send messages to more than 10 contacts you need to unlock the premium textblast through an in app purchase. So yes your contact list is safe. I doesn't work with Google Voice looks like it's only US based and I am in Europe.

Hi, indeed this is a MVP to test the idea. I used it myself yesterday to send a message to 176 contacts, it took me honestly no more than 8 minutes (on Android). The search feature is quite a deal but not critical.

Hah, I built a mass text messaging SaaS product called TextBlast in 2012 :P had the domain TextBlast.org. I've since shut it down but funny coincidence.

Funny fact indeed :)

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