I'll in the process of starting a txt based sercvice and am amazed at the difference in price to access providers sms gateways.

Companies vary from $1500 to $3000 to get short codes for  a year from  the 2 providers and also vary from $50-$350  a monthly as a hosting fee.

I would be interested to find out what SMS gateways people are using and what are the costs.

I understand that clickatell is always recommended here but I have heard it can take up to 24 hrs to deliver the message when busy.