Microsoft Kills SMS Link Service for Outlook
July 10, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
I’m not sure how many people were probably aware but you could use Outlook to send and receive SMS notifications right to your computer. The service was provided by a feature called SMS Link. It worked fairly well, although I had some general user functionality issues I think could have been improved.
Microsoft has announced via email that they will be discontinuing this service on August 26, 2009.
Microsoft’s SMS Link service will be discontinued effective August 26th, 2009. Once this service is discontinued, current users will no longer be able to send SMS messages through Office Outlook 2007 using SMS Link. There are several service providers worldwide who offer similar services, and if you wish to continue using this feature in Office Outlook 2007, you should consider switching to one of these providers.
The available service providers to switch to if you would prefer not to lose this functionality are the following:
- SMS Officer $9/mnth
- Red Oxygen $23/mnth
- Bulletin $0.10/msg sent
These services allow users to continue to send and receive SMS messages into Outlook as they have enjoyed in the past with SMS Link.
For every provider there is actually a way to send SMS messages to a phone number from any email client. For instance, I’m on AT&T wireless, and to send me a text from email, you just have to use the following: number@txt.att.net. There are similar options for every carrier in the US.
The only problem with that method though is that you’re then restricted to challenges with email delivery like blacklists, whitelists, spam filters and other delivery obstacles.