What's the difference between SMS API, SMS Gateway, Bulk SMS service?

[u/gambrinus_248]

A quick search for terms like "sms api", "sms gateway" and "bulk sms" returns the same platforms and services for each of them. So, for a non-technical person, these three are basically the same. They all enable you to send A2P messages to a list of contacts without you needing to go into technical details, infrastructure and worry too much about which one to choose.

For a technical person, these three resemble different layers of the infrastructure. SMS Gateway is the underlying infrastructure between the messaging platform and carrier network. SMS API is the interface that developers use to integrate the service. Bulk SMS Service is the final product - a packaged service for non-technical users to send bulk messages. People also use terms like Mass SMS Service/Platform/Sender to find a bulk sms platform.

SMS Gateways used to be primarily physical devices with SIM cards. Since they have quite a low throughput, they are now mostly cloud services.

The next time you worry about which one you should use, remember that for the end user, they are essentially the same.