Just to confirm my reading:

• SMS sent to your ported in number at VoIP.ms will be sent to your email. When you reply to that email, it will be sent as an SMS to the original sender.
• To send an SMS you do so in a VoIP.ms web page, but the receiver of that SMS has to be in your VoIP.ms address book.

Thanks in Advance.
I need to have SMS service at my Canadian and US number.

Yes, both are correct. You do have the ability to import contacts; you can export Google contacts to .csv, remove extraneous fields with Excel, and import them all into VoIP.ms' address book. Not sure whether Apple offers similar export functionality. If you use Android but don't sync with Google for some reason, there appear to be numerous apps for exporting contacts to various formats.

I should also note that the emailed text message includes a unique identifier in the subject that maps back to the source number from which the SMS was sent. That identifier appears to have a very long lifetime; I don't think they get recycled. It's technically possible to send a message to a contact that doesn't exist in your VoIP.ms address book by including that identifier (in the format "[#XXXXXXXXX]") in the subject and sending it to [email protected]. Of course you can also simply reply to a previous SMS sent from that individual to your VoIP.ms DID. :)

EDIT: There are both Android and Apple texting apps designed to use VoIP.ms' SMS API. They allow you to send texts to arbitrary numbers that are not stored in either your phone's contacts or the VoIP.ms address book. They're not replacements for your regular SMS app, though. The one I've tried is for Android: VoIP.ms SMS

Thank you for your explanation. Aprreciated very much.
Is there any benefit to you if I sign up like a code that you can PM me?

Sure, use this link to create your account: https://voip.ms/en/invite/MTMyMzMw

First time I've used their referral program. It'll get me a $10 credit, apparently :)

Not so. Although the box on their website is labeled "contact" you can simply type in a phone number and it'll work.

Keep in mind though that sending SMS is not supported to most countries outside of the US/Canada. You can receive, but not send/reply (including replying via email). Also MMS does NOT work (send or receive), and that includes group SMS messages - and the sender gets no indication that the message has failed. I ended up moving from voip.ms to Google Voice simply because I was missing too many messages due to them being sent to a group.

I've used the same one and highly recommend it. You do need to give up your credential to the author though in order to get push messages, which is needed for it to work real-time.

As others have stated, you can just type in a number to send an SMS. But if someone has already sent you a text, the sms.voip.ms webpage opens up a threaded view and you can just reply much like you would be able to from your phone's native messaging app, with no need to type in a number or have a contact in your address book.

If you have a more technical inclination, voip.ms now supports SMS SIP, so you could you can tinker with the settings and try and get an app like Bria configured to receive calls and texts.

I would still not rely on voip.ms for heavy text use because of its limitations around things like short codes and group/MMS messages.

Please try this again with a number that you are absolutely certain is not in your address book. I actually verified this before my prior post and got an error that the number I typed in was not a valid contact when I clicked "Send." And I verified it again just now.

Their REST API has no such limitation, somewhat unsurprisingly. I confirmed that with the same number I used to test the web UI. Not sure why they felt it needed to be enforced in the latter.

I don't have ANY addresses in my address book, and I've never had problems sending SMS's.

Just tested it again twice. Once with one of my numbers that I'm certain I've never SMS'ed, and then a second time with the phone number for a Denny's restaurant half-way across the country that I picked at random. Both worked fine. (Well.. both sent. I'm guessing the Denny's didn't get the SMS, but that's not really the point)

Edit: OK, I might know what your problem is. Are you putting a "1" in front of the number? Try leaving that out and just enter a 10 digit number...

Nope, that's not it but I figured it out ... you and @javabytes are using the mobile web portal. I've been using the SMS Message Center. That apparently limits you to address book entries only, as I've tried it with and without a leading "1", dashes, parentheses, and spaces. If it's not in my address book I get this:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c0c1a7c1c4.png

Through the Mobile Portal it works fine.

Mystery solved ...

I did, just as I stated in the post you quoted (repeated below).

Here's a screenshot of it failing with just the 10 digit number. I forgot that I had saved it:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...538a6cc144.png

So ... the really weird thing is, even though I'd had the issue above this morning, I'm not having it now. The 10 digit number is working and it's sending texts just fine via the message center.

Even something as simple as a trailing space can cause it to fail. But you definitely can send SMS from the message center by typing in the number directly.

Ya know, I've spent the better part of my professional life pushing bytes between healthcare applications and doing my best to get them there in good shape. I'd like to think that I know what kind of impact an extraneous space character might have on a phone number and, in my testing, account that for possibility.

I thought I did just that.

I will admit that there is a non-zero probability that I didn't. ;)

:shrug:

Thank you all for all the pointers and potential pitfalls.

I have set up and ported my main number over as well as a US/Canadian toll-free number for calls outside my home area code.

Dodge DeBoulet: I used your link, let's see what happens

Thank you! Looks like I got a $10 credit! :D