[nemrel]

First a little background -- I have been doing a Daily Text Message for a couple months now. The text message is sent from gmail to a small list of contacts cell phones. The message is a simple "Daily: Did you know?" type of thing. Each message comes out shortly after 12 midnight each day. The whole thing is just for fun and doesn't spam anyone who hasn't asked for the texts alerts/messages. I just send one out per day. The messages are simple facts/trivia type of thing and doesn't sell, promote, endorse or ask people to buy anything - just the odd fact and no other text. I've been doing this manually by getting people (usually FaceBook & MySpace contacts) to send me their cell numbers and phone carriers (so I can manually add the @ part to the send via email - example 5555555555@vtext.com sends to Verizon cell phones). I then have a contact list in gmail. I create the message, add the recipients and hit send. When new people want to join the list I manually add them. When people want to stop getting these texts I have to manually remove them.

I've been looking to expand things and make the messages and process more automatic, easier to do. I'm looking for various Bulk/Group Text Messaging Services to help me automate the whole process. I haven't found any that make it easy to do, costs little to no money and at the same time don't annoy the people on my list. Can anyone suggest something?

Some of the features I am looking for, include the following:

1. cheap or free
2. allows people to sign-up to get their alerts - maybe with a simple website or front-end so they can sign-up or remove themselves from the list
3. allows me to set-up the daily messages in advance and sends them out when I indicate them to be sent
4. doesn't sell the numbers to advertisers or spam the people who sign-up to get the messages
5. allows about 120 characters to be sent in each text

Currently I have been looking into - Tatango.com . But the prices are kind of high, especially since I'm doing this just for fun and especially for their ad-free texts. Suggestions? Ideas? I've thought of a few different things - like seeing if Twitter might be an option. But so far I haven't found a solution best suited for my needs.

As a side note, my wife works for a non-profit company that is like a recreation center and if I can get a nice service for my hobby lists I'd like to suggest it toher boss to alert people about closings or emergencies releated to the center. They would be able to pay something for the service, since they have a budget.

Thanks in advance!