A few months ago TroopTrack's text-message capability took a big hit - the free email-to-text service we were using stopped working and we had to disable free text messaging from TroopTrack. This has been discouraging to us at TroopTrack and to many of you and I have spent some time working on a plan to add text messaging support back.

And it's coming! On January 1, 2025, we will celebrate the new year by rolling out SMS support in TroopTrack. This will not be based on the email-to-text solution we used before, but will use true SMS. This offers lots of advantages over the email-to-text approach including faster delivery and better control of the message appearance. It will also make our "reply" feature easier to use and help us stay out of trouble with the new regulations regarding privacy and text messaging.

The only downside is that SMS delivery is not free, and compared to push notifications and emails, the per-message cost is pretty high. As a result, this new feature is going to be a TroopTrack add-on. It will cost $20/year and will provide up to 500/messages per month. If you don't use text-messaging, you don't need to purchase this and you TroopTrack costs will stay the same. 

We've tried very hard over the years to keep TroopTrack inexpensive and to avoid "premium" features. Our preference is to make everything available to everyone and not nickel-and-dime our customers to death with add-ons that pile up over time. As a result, I've been really reluctant to do this and have dragged my feet on committing to it. In the meantime, you've been without text-messaging and that has stunk for you, so I want to apologize for taking so long to decide. Hopefully, we have priced this so that it is affordable for those who want to use it.

Thanks, as always, for your support of TroopTrack. We have the best customers in the world and appreciate all the feedback you give us.

Best wishes,

Dave

Permalink

Discuss this new feature in the TroopTrack Community