Hello, I posted a couple of days ago, but my post must have been deleted (or I can’t find it.)
Anyway I’m posting again here. It’s about the price per sms. I have bought credit from both biteSMS and FishText and tried them out both. In both cases I found their service very good and reliable, but why is biteSMS so much more expensive? I mean in my case at least, sms to Greek networks through FishText cost 1,5-2 eurocents/sms (Source: fishtext.com/ft_coverageByCountry.html) but biteSMS costs 8 eurocents!! That’s 4x the Fishtext price! Why such a big difference?? I would really appreciate an answer! Thanks! :)

I answered this before with my own theories though no one confirmed them. Here was the exact copy and paste out of my post. The first question was, why did the price increase, the second was why are some services cheaper, but bite is more expensive.

Pasted text:The reason for the increase was because bite was losing money from the credits rather than making money. This obviously would be a problem and as they can’t get cheaper providers to work for everyone, they had to adjust the price to make profits again.

The second question is simply a guess, as I don’t know any other texting apps and I don’t use bites credit system, but i’d say it’s because bite has more features and is designed to replace your stock texting app. It’s also still cheaper than most countries international texts, and (again, completely a guess) bite may support more countries with it’s more expensive providers than those other apps. Just my thoughts.

I know that the app has many features, but if you really like it and want to keep it anyway (even without using biteSMS credits) you may just pay for the app! The sms pricing (the service part) is (or it should be) a different story.

text:The reason for the increase was because bite was losing money from the credits rather than making money. This obviously would be a problem and as they can’t get cheaper providers to work for everyone, they had to adjust the price to make profits again.[/quote]
But then the question is: How can FishText have such low prices? I don’t think they male 6 euro-cents minus for each message you send.

Like I said, cheaper/less providers

Such a pity though, nice program but expensive service. :( I guess I’ll have to wait for a price change (until I’m done with my bitesms credits). If not I will use the alternative. The price difference is just to big to keep using biteSMS. :(

Well, FishText also supports over 200 contries they mention on the homepage. So the question is: where is the advantage of BiteSMS’ system? Maybe it’s more reliabel as I never tested FishText. Altough the question is if it’s really worth the price.

Actually I have been testing them for days . I send sms through both biteSms and Fishtext to numbers in Greece (where I live), Belgium and the Netherlands. My friends have sent sms back after a minute or so I can assume that both services are reliable.

Wouldn´t it be possible to add this service to bitesms?

That’s like asking “wouldn’t it be possible for Coke to sell all Pepsi drinks from now” ? biteSMS is making money selling its own credits, why on earth would they want to add some other company and sell someone else’s credits ?

I don’t think so ramasaurus. BiteSMS said that they paid too much for delivering messages so they had to increase the prices. But if other services really have such cheap services BiteSMS could also use their service and add a margin so that they can lower the prices and still take profit.

Or am I wrong? I don’t think it’s the same like coke/pepsi because the product itself (=sms) is identical.

Ah ok, if it has got to do with changing their routing service it makes sense.

I think big is on to something here

Heres’ the reason:

1) FishText does not support Unicode SMS messages (biteSMS does).
2) FishText has a maximum size limit for SMS messages (biteSMS has no limit)
3) FishText has country specific pricing (biteSMS has a flat rate anywhere to anywhere)
4) FishText does not support as many destinations as biteSMS (by a long way).

Of course we could offer country specific pricing, but it gets complicated very quickly and does not fit in with our credit system. We took the decision to keep it simple with a flat rate, and that will not suit everyone. It’s just fair competition, FishText have better prices in some countries, and this suits some users. But if you want a flat rate anywhere to anywhere, don’t want to worry about sending long texts or special characters and all this bundled in a feature rich app, then of course biteSMS would be better.

1) That’s true (not important to me but ok)
2) OK, but SMS are supposed to be fairly short (SMS=Short Message Service) but even then the fishtext price is so cheap tha you can send more sms if you really need to send such a long message.
3)Actually thats a good thing. I looked through the fishtext price list and I noticed that the vast MAJORITY of countries have prices such :1,5-2 cents, very few such as the UK 3 cents, very very few 5 cents and about 3-4 companies 7cents/sms. Still cheaper than biteSMS.
4) Could you be a bit more specific? It’s a long list for me to compare one by one right now :D However I noticed that the Operators that you don’t support, Fishtxt does. (I mean the exceptions here: http://www.bitesms.com/main/countries)

i have load the fishtext app from appstore, i pay now 0.015 € cents for 1 sms. from germany to bosnia and hercegovina.
at bitesms i must pay 0,06€ but only when i take the huge package. I am a long time customer and very pleased. but the diffrent and the relation does not fit. i have now maybe 250 credits at bitesms i use up my credits, and then i am sorry to say bye. andreas you have help me so much to save money. THX

No worries, we can’t provide a decent service for that price, so if FishText can, then good luck to them!

I’ll stay, Martin! ;)
IMHO BiteSMS has much more advantages than only its sms-send-service.

@ martin
i tried the service, the service is the price. and they also send mails like bite sms. 0,015 cents fish text.. bite sms 0,6 only in the huge package. its a to big diffrent for the same thing.