OwnDesk Blast

Because it cannot be. Sending an SMS needs the SEND_SMS permission, and Google Play restricts that permission to apps that are set as the phone’s default messaging app – a rule they introduced precisely because bulk-texting apps get abused for spam. A tool like this one cannot be published there whoever writes it. So it is distributed as an APK you install yourself, and your phone will ask you to allow installing from an unknown source. That warning is Android doing its job; you are choosing to trust a file, so only ever take it from this site.

Download the APK on your Android phone, or copy it across from a computer, and open it. Android will say the file came from an unknown source and offer a settings switch – allow it for your browser or file manager, then open the APK again. The first time you send, the app asks for SMS permission. Nothing else is needed.

No, and it never will. iOS does not let any app send an SMS on your behalf, at any price, so there is no iPhone version of this or of anything like it. Android 6.0 or newer only.

This is the one OwnDesk product that does, and only once: it checks your licence key online the first time you use it. After that the sending itself is pure SMS through your carrier and needs no data at all.

Whatever your own mobile plan charges for a text, exactly as if you had typed it yourself – nothing extra goes to me or to any gateway. If you have unlimited texts, the messages are free. That is the whole reason this exists instead of a $50-a-month platform.

Android itself limits an app to roughly 100 messages per hour as an anti-abuse measure, and your carrier may temporarily block your SIM if you fire off thirty or forty back to back. The adjustable delay is there for that reason. This is a tool for a list of dozens or low hundreds, spread out – not for tens of thousands.

Text people who gave you their number and expect to hear from you – customers, patients, members, your own contacts – and give them an easy way to say stop. That is good practice everywhere and it is what this tool is built for. Rules on commercial messaging vary by country and by state, so check what applies where you are before you run a campaign. The app sends what you tell it to; what you send is up to you.