New – Worldwide Delivery of Amazon SNS Messages via SMS

Many applications use the Amazon SNS to deliver SMS messages to individuals or to groups. Because SNS is simple and easy to use, you can add push notifications to your application with a modest amount of code.

Today we are making SNS even more useful by adding support for worldwide delivery of SMS messages. You can now use SNS to send SMS text messages to mobile phone numbers in more than 200 countries.

Along with this change we are also adding several other features to this feature:

• No Opt-In – Message recipients no longer need to opt-in to SNS before they can receive messages.
• Additional Regions – You can now send messages with SMS delivery from the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Regions.
• Direct Publishing – You can now send messages to a phone number without first subscribing the number to an SNS topic. If a user replies with “STOP”, they will be added to the opt-out list associated with your AWS account (this feature applies to messages sent to phone numbers located in countries where local regulations require opt-out capabilities).
• Opt-Out Management – You can now manage opt-out numbers using the AWS Management Console, API, or CLI (learn more).
• Delivery Status – You can now enable logging of delivery status for SMS messages and access the status in a pair of CloudWatch Log Groups (Successful and Failed).
• Limit – You can now set spending limits on a per-account, per-month basis. You can also set a per-message spending limit.
• Usage Reports – You can now access daily SMS usage reports, with information on successful and failed deliveries (learn more).
• Long/Short Code Pool – Messages sent via SNS will now appear to come from one of several long or short codes maintained by Amazon SNS. Multiple messages sent from one account to a particular phone number will all be sent from the same long or short code.

To learn more about all of these new features, read Amazon SNS Worldwide SMS Delivery on the AWS Mobile Development Blog.

— Jeff;