# SMS Module vs. Email-to-text **URL:** \ **Category:** Ignition\ **Created:** [July 29, 2019, 6:12pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/sms-module-vs-email-to-text/26962 "2019-07-29T18:12:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Harikrishna\_Patadiya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b487fb/32.png) [@Harikrishna\_Patadiya](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Harikrishna_Patadiya)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:12pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/sms-module-vs-email-to-text/26962/1 "2019-07-29T18:12:24Z")
Can someone please explain the difference between using an SMS module versus sending SMS through email (email-to-text)? I don’t know what features the SMS module adds that can’t be achieved by email-to-text. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Kevin.Herron](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.herron/32/7259_2.png) [@Kevin.Herron](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Herron)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:17pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/sms-module-vs-email-to-text/26962/2 "2019-07-29T18:17:13Z")
If email-to-SMS reliably works for all of your users then the biggest advantage to the SMS module would be support for acknowledgement. It’s not uncommon for carrier support for email-to-SMS to be poor or non-existent though. ---
**Author:** ![Harikrishna\_Patadiya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b487fb/32.png) [@Harikrishna\_Patadiya](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Harikrishna_Patadiya)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:19pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/sms-module-vs-email-to-text/26962/3 "2019-07-29T18:19:48Z")
> [@Kevin.Herron](#): > > It’s not uncommon for carrier support for email-to-SMS to be poor or non-existent though. Yea, that's what I'm worried about. I'm going to try out email-to-SMS for alerts. Our customer wants only critical alarms on SMS. That's a small amount of them so I'll try out email-to-SMS and see if it works. If not, it's great that a solution exists already. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![jlivingston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/779978/32.png) [@jlivingston](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/jlivingston)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 8:23pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/sms-module-vs-email-to-text/26962/4 "2019-07-29T20:23:51Z")
There is one other thing that the customer may wish to consider: Not every employee may have a phone plan that includes ‘unlimited free Internet browsing’, compared to ‘free unlimited voice and text’. This means that if the employee is not at a laptop with Internet access, yet rather at a telephone with only voice and ‘text’ access- they could miss a ‘text’ message. That is because what the telephone providers such as AT & T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint ( and a host of those who resell services, eg. Cricket, Consumer Cellular, etc. ) call ‘text’ is not e-mail through a web browser. Your geographic area and providers may vary; yet realize that some resellers ( eg. Tracfone ) are not always going to tell their customers the difference until the account has been in use for a few months. By that time, the customer may be less inclined to go elsewhere.