Thinking Big

Yes. Above and beyond those 4.

what’s wrong with those 4?

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Maybe i did not look into them enough. Twillo looked maybe free. The others looked like they cost money at some point. Twillio seemed like it might include marketing messaging as well.

Bottom line they all are looking for paying customers. The local API is nice but people using them forever for free is not their business model.

Offering a limited amount of messages per day directly with HA as part of the monthly pay model would cost pennies to the HA team but not require people to sign up for APIs etx

Ahh yes that is a point. Trouble is, while a tcp/ip connection/message is essentially free and very easy, integrating with all the telcos in over 200 countries in the world is not trivial.

Agreed. But don’t get me wrong but with hopefully 1000s of people paying $5 a month it could be be done. I’ll be one of those paying.

Edit
Not a fair comparison since Samsung is a huge company but $99 or less included the hub the software and unlimited lifetime SMS. Like 10 a day would probably cost less than 1-2 cents a day. Probably less.

Just saying that would be a great offer for the $5

AWS SNS SMS Pricing

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Yeah so highly variable pricing. Any US provider .645 cents per message, New Zealand 12.146 cents per message (19 x the US price).

I use telegram is great

What interests me is how the $5 was fixed, although I accept it is none of my business.

For example, was research done into:

  • The total market size i.e. how many use HA?
  • Of those, how many are interested in a Cloud service?
  • Of those how much would they be prepared to pay?
  • Would a Cloud service attract new users to HA?

and so on and so on…

Objectively I think $5 a month is quite a high subscription price given that for example I pay just about that much a month for my mobile phone service or about four times that for my Internet. Although I know there are several reasons why these are not comparable.

I am also interested (and again it is probably none of my business) if there was any research done into this particular price point and whether a lower one might attract more people to the level that it could actually generate more income (e.g. would twice as many people subscribe for $3 a month?). Or conversely of course if a higher one would still have attracted enough people?


None of that should be taken as any kind of objection, criticism or judgement; or indeed an inference that I will or will not subscribe. I don’t currently use or have a need for the Cloud service but I think the future for HA and this service as outlined in this blog post is very exciting which means it is very likely that I will want to at some point in the future.

I really hope that the HA developers dont have to turn into accountants. If a user cant pay the small fee for sms using Twillio or Clickatel, then use something else

YES! Even without a discount, I’d much prefer a yearly subscription!!

not .64 cents it’s $0.00645, so 100 SMS messages would cost .64 cents. I understand about the pricing being variable, I’m just saying it’s something to look into offering. Again, many systems offer this, it’s not a crazy thing to suggest. Would be nice to just add a single line to my configuration.yaml and add SMS without having to find a third party, get API key, etc. Again, just making suggestions.

It was just a suggestion. I have no problem paying for SMS, but if I’m already paying for cloud service, the thought is, why not look into how much it would cost to add SMS capabilites into HA. HA is already paying for AWS services for the Alexa integration (at least I assume they are or will me), I’m sure from a technical standpoint adding SMS would not be that complex, it’s just another service offering. Maybe adding it and making it simple would increase the amount of people willing to pay, increasing their revenue. Just another nice selling point.

With that said, I dont care if they do or dont, I’ll be happily paying $5 and get what I get. If you’re not interested in this as a service offering, then move on. I’m not sure why a few of you are so against the idea being suggested.

I have very hard to believe that one sma in the Us is charged with 0.0064 usd. Its 0.64 cent. Show me please

And if I read that right, it’s to any of 200+ countries.

So what is the next paid third party service that should be implemented for free in HA? I am sure thare are many wishes

It’s not;

any messages sent to non-US phone numbers are charged based on the pricing below and this pricing changes on a regular basis.

I don’t understand the issue with this. This will be my last post.
1st, It’s not free, its $5 a month.
2nd, they have already said that they hope to add new capabilities in the future
3rd, I made a suggestion to add SMS since it is very cheap for these services when purchased in bulk, like they would be doing.
4th, they are already using AWS, so adding this would likely be very easy to add

SMS integration is very standard practice for most HA systems, Smartthings, Hubitat, vera, etc.

Personally I felt like this was a pretty basic request/suggestion. I felt like offering this might bring even more people into the $5 monthly plan. I’m sorry this has turned into a back and forth, filling up this post with lot’s of bickering for really no reason. If you dont like the idea, then move on. I’d think that the they would appreciate suggestions, even ones that they may or may not implement, but maybe I’m wrong.

Good day

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I stand corrected, the pricing was for US.

i think it would be expensive to send to other countries, looking at the aws chart posted earlier for example it $0.12 to send to New zealand. thats not many in a month for $5