Cellcast review

Cellcast pricing

Cellcast sells fixed prepaid credit bundles rather than pricing on monthly volume. Every rate here is the per message cost of the cheapest published bundle combination that covers the benchmark month exactly. Nothing is assumed about credits bought ahead: each figure covers that month and no more.

That gives 3.70c at one thousand messages a month, 3.10c at fifteen thousand, 2.83c at one hundred and twenty five thousand and 2.83c at two hundred and fifty thousand.

Fifteen thousand costs $465 a month. Among the 20 providers billing in Australian dollars that publish a rate at fifteen thousand, Cellcast sits 4th on price.

The bundles are fixed sizes rather than thresholds, so a month that falls between two of them means buying surplus credits or combining bundles at a higher blended rate. Credits never expire, which softens the surplus, but the spend for that month still sits above the headline rate.

Cellcast asks any sender above one hundred thousand messages a month to contact it for a quote, so a large sender cannot plan against a listed price. The pricing page also carries a first purchase banner that discounts a first purchase during March only. It was still displayed when the page was read in September, so it is either stale or runs annually, and a first purchase price is not what a monthly sender pays. New signups receive free credits. Price answers part of the question, and the sending methods answer the rest.

Cellcast features for Australian senders

Cellcast publishes a REST API, email to SMS, two way messaging, MMS to Australian mobiles, dedicated numbers, shared numbers and alphanumeric sender IDs. Its API authorises calls with a Bearer token created in the dashboard API menu, and its default per connection rate limit can be raised on request. Delivery receipts and replies are pushed to your URL.

Email to SMS sends through an address at sms.cellcast.com.au built from the recipient's mobile number. Senders can register as many Allowed Addresses as they want, and a wildcard domain is accepted. A global setting picks whether the subject, the body, or both become the SMS content, and replies return automatically to the inbox that sent the SMS.

The web app uploads CSV and Excel files, and columns can go into the message as merge fields.

1. Select Upload List in the left navigation and download the sample CSV.
2. Create a New List in List Management, then select Add Numbers and upload the file.
3. Send to the list from Campaign Manager.

Its bulk SMS page says MMS carries images, videos or PDFs. Those sender options lead straight into the ACMA register question.

Cellcast sender ID and the ACMA register

ACMA's approved list for the SMS Sender ID Register lists Cellcast under its own name as a partner of a certified telco, under the entry CELLCAST PTY LTD. For your business, that means a sender ID registered through Cellcast runs through its partnership with a certified telco. A dedicated number costs $18 a month, or $169 a year as published, alongside free shared numbers. The register is one trust signal, and the support record is another.

Cellcast support and reputation

Support is staffed by phone, email and SMS from eight am to eight pm AEST, with emergency tickets around the clock. Cellcast publishes an uptime claim of "100% uptime SLA" and a "100% delivery rate guarantee"; no SLA document, credit schedule or remedy is published behind either and a delivery guarantee, but neither carries a published remedy behind it. Its data security page credits its ISO27001 validation to Amazon Web Services, its hosting provider, not to Cellcast itself. Public reviews sit at 4.2 from 6 reviews on Trustpilot, none in the last twelve months. The review record is thin, and that shapes who should choose it.

Who Cellcast suits

Cellcast suits an Australian sender that wants prepaid bundles, free shared numbers, free replies and credits that never expire. The local toolkit of a REST API, email to SMS, MMS and file upload covers a mid volume sender well.

A sender above one hundred thousand messages a month should look elsewhere, because listed prices stop at the quote line. A buyer who wants a remedy behind an uptime claim, or a live review base, should also keep comparing.