Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:10

UK football fans can manage their SMS goal alert acount online with matchalert.

matchalert sees it’s advantage as combining the convenience of SMS alerts with a web-based subscription management. Users can customise their alerts via the matchalert website, as well as stopping the service altogether via the usual ‘stop’ text message.

"SMS alert services have, historically, been very blunt tools", says Hreinn Gústavsson, CEO of Stokkur Software, the Icelandic company responsible for matchalert. “SMS alerts have been very ‘binary’, either ‘on’ or ‘off’ - so customers were either getting SMS news alerts or they weren’t. They weren’t able to customise the content or frequency, or they needed to keep very careful track of exactly which services they’d subscribed to. And, on the occasions when people made mistakes with SMS services, or forgot they were signing up to continuous messages and ended up with a large bill, the whole concept took a lot of flak, as it did with the Crazy Frog ringtone mess,” he said.

“SMS is still a great way for everyone to receive alerts, but it’s never been a good mechanism for users to manage their alert service. matchalert brings the two worlds together, and we think we’re the first service to do that,” he added.

matchalert options include only the final score, subscribe to a whole league giving all goals and/or final scores from that league, and follow a wide range of leagues and teams.

Each SMS alert costs a user 25 pence, plus standard network charges. Users are limited to receiving a maximum of 18 text messages per week. SMS delivery is provided by mkodo.