I'm developing an application where I would like to be able to send and receive SMS messages, and I'm thinking of using the email to SMS gateways because it's lower cost and one less technology I have to integrate. I've read Limitations on SMS messages sent using free email->SMS gateways and most of those limitations don't apply to me:
The problem I do have is that at least for some carriers (I just tested Verizon in the US), when the recipient replies back there doesn't appear to be any indication of what the message is in reply to. By contrast, AT&T preserves the original SMTP Message-ID and Subject.
Are there any known solutions to this problem? This isn't really a global application (not yet anyway) so I don't mind carrier-specific hacks here and there, as long as there's some way to track the reply.
Edit: here's a stripped down sample of the email reply:
Delivered-To: [email protected]
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from njbrspamp5.vtext.com (njbrspamp5.vtext.com [69.78.129.150])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id t4si5870253qcs.11.2011.05.05.14.32.20;
Thu, 05 May 2011 14:32:21 -0700 (PDT)
Date: 05 May 2011 21:32:20 +0000
Received: from unknown (HELO njbb-wigdb2) ([10.134.199.245])
by njbrspamp5.vtext.com with ESMTP; 05 May 2011 21:32:20 +0000
Message-ID: <16619319.1304631140504.JavaMail.root@njbb-wigdb2>
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: This is a reply!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
I realize this may be a less informed answer, but I know at least Gmail supports extensions/aliases so that e.g. [email protected] goes to your e-mail inbox. I don't know if this is widely supported, but it seems like it would be clever if you could do [email protected].