Send SMS to Singapore
from $0.0250/msg

The Three Carriers: Singtel, M1, and StarHub

Singtel (Singtel Group): 35% market share, the former monopoly incumbent and largest carrier in Southeast Asia. Singtel's A2P infrastructure is mature and expensive for small senders (minimum commitments often USD 500–1,000 per month), but wholesale rates are lowest. Direct peering with Singtel is a must for high-volume senders; they also operate a short-code program (4–6 digit sender IDs) for registered enterprise users. smsroute's Singtel route achieves 99.5%+ delivery and sub-30 ms latency.

M1 Limited: 30% market share, a publicly traded mobile operator with a large prepaid subscriber base. M1 is known for competitive wholesale pricing and flexible A2P partnerships. M1's SMS platform accepts both numeric (8–11 digit) and alphabetic sender IDs (up to 11 characters) without pre-approval; carriers may rewrite unregistered IDs, but senders can register branded company names in advance. smsroute's M1 route delivers in 30–60 ms with 99%+ success.

StarHub: 28% market share, formerly a fixed-line and cable provider, now a major mobile player with a growing enterprise customer base. StarHub offers the most flexible wholesale terms for senders with 10,000+ monthly message volumes; they also provide detailed delivery reports (bounce codes, carrier blocks) that senders can use to optimize send strategies. smsroute's StarHub route is the fastest on average (p50 35 ms) due to their low internal queue depth.

Pricing vs. Competitors: smsroute at 50% Below Twilio

smsroute's price of USD 0.0250 reflects our operator-direct peering model: we eliminate aggregator markup by connecting directly to Singtel, M1, and StarHub. Competitors like Twilio, Vonage, and MessageBird maintain centralized platforms for 150+ countries and accept higher interchange costs to support varied use cases (voice, WhatsApp, email); they do not prioritize SMS pricing in high-operator-concentration markets like Singapore.

At 100,000 messages per month, you save USD 2,500 using smsroute instead of Twilio. At 1 million per month, the savings reach USD 25,000. Our crypto-only model also eliminates payment processing fees (typically 2–3% for card or bank transfers), further reducing your effective cost.

Latency and Delivery: 35 ms Median, 99.3% Success

smsroute's operator-direct routes to Singapore deliver with a 35 ms median latency (p50) and 65 ms 95th percentile (p95). This means 95% of messages reach the carrier's inbox in under 65 milliseconds. For comparison, aggregator-based routes typically achieve 200–500 ms due to intermediate queueing and peer-to-peer hops.

Our end-to-end delivery success rate is 99.3%, measured as messages that were accepted by Singtel, M1, or StarHub and delivered to the handset or voicemail. Failures are primarily due to: (1) invalid or deactivated numbers (no IMSI), (2) temporary carrier congestion (retried automatically), and (3) user-side blocks (do-not-disturb, carrier family controls). We do not count messages rejected due to NDNCR or PDPA violations as a delivery failure; those are sender compliance issues.

Our 99.9% uptime SLA is measured on the smsroute API endpoint and message queue. We operate redundant API servers across two availability zones and use AWS-grade infrastructure. We do not claim 99.999% (five nines) because carrier outages and upstream dependencies can cause brief interruptions beyond our control.

Consent Framework: PDPA and the National Do-Not-Call Registry

Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA, Chapter 26C) mandates explicit consent before any organization may use a personal phone number for marketing. This is not opt-out (where you send first and let recipients remove themselves); it is consent-before-message. You must collect, document, and store proof of consent—either a checkbox timestamp, an email opt-in, or an SMS confirmation—before sending the first promotional SMS.

The IMDA (Infocomm Media Development Authority) publishes guidance on acceptable consent documentation. Best practice: capture signed consent (digital or paper) with timestamp, the specific message type (SMS marketing), and the sender identity. If you cannot produce a dated consent record, the IMDA may issue an enforcement notice requiring you to cease and desist; enforcement actions are typically escalated to your sender bank or payment processor, not directly to your SMS gateway.

The National Do-Not-Call Registry (NDNCR) is a secondary, mandatory opt-out list. After obtaining consent, you must consult the NDNCR before each send. Consumers may register their phone number to opt out of all marketing SMS across all senders. smsroute provides a batch consultation endpoint: POST your recipient list, and we return flagged NDNCR-registered numbers to exclude. Many senders integrate this into their scheduled send workflows (e.g., weekly NDNCR sync before campaign launch).

Failure to consult the NDNCR is treated as a strict-liability violation. The regulator has published enforcement actions against major senders who ignored NDNCR checks and sent repeated messages to opted-out numbers. Penalties are in the form of cease-and-desist orders and potential six-figure fines (SGD, equivalent to USD 75,000–150,000+). Carriers also enforce: if they detect you sending to NDNCR-listed numbers more than once, they may throttle or block your sender ID.

Transactional SMS (OTP, account confirmations, delivery notifications) are exempt from PDPA consent requirements if they relate to an existing transaction or account. However, you must still comply with quiet hours: no transactional SMS between 21:00 and 08:00 SGT, and never on public holidays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related

curl -X POST https://api.smsroute.cc/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+6587654321",
    "text": "Hello, this is your verification code: 123456",
    "from": "MyApp"
  }'

import requests

api_token = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"
headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {api_token}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

payload = {
    "to": "+6587654321",
    "text": "Hello, this is your verification code: 123456",
    "from": "MyApp"
}

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.smsroute.cc/send",
    json=payload,
    headers=headers
)

print(response.json())

import fetch from "node-fetch";

const apiKey = process.env.SMSROUTE_API_KEY;

const res = await fetch("https://api.smsroute.cc/messages", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    to: "+655551234567",
    from: "smsroute",
    text: "Your verification code is 384921",
  }),
});

console.log(await res.json());

<?php
$apiKey = getenv('SMSROUTE_API_KEY');

$payload = json_encode([
    'to'   => '+655551234567',
    'from' => 'smsroute',
    'text' => 'Your verification code is 384921',
], JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

$ch = curl_init('https://api.smsroute.cc/messages');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $payload,
]);

echo curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

package main

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "net/http"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    payload, _ := json.Marshal(map[string]string{
        "to":   "+655551234567",
        "from": "smsroute",
        "text": "Your verification code is 384921",
    })

    req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST",
        "https://api.smsroute.cc/messages",
        bytes.NewBuffer(payload))
    req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("SMSROUTE_API_KEY"))
    req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")

    resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
    if err != nil { panic(err) }
    defer resp.Body.Close()

    body, _ := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
    fmt.Println(string(body))
}