What can you use to get an application to be able to receive SMS message?

Question

• Do you need to use some kind of provider?
• Can you setup your own SMS server?
• Does any open source solutions exist?

I am an SMS newbie so

Answer 1

TextMarks provides a service where they map an incoming SMS to them to an HTTP GET to a URL you provide and then send the response back as another SMS. They don't charge you if you let them add some advertising to the reply SMS. The problem is they don't provide this for free anymore for T-Mobile due to T-Mobile charging them. I'd be willing to pay per message, but they charge $0.20 per user-month, which is rather steep. Anyone know of anyone who provides this service?