Zain offers SMSthem service, this service provides the ability to reach a group of people by sending one text message to one number only.

I didn’t know about it but my sister showed it to me so I can configure it to my mother.

You can login (link), and register by providing your mobile and a password will be SMSed to you.

Quote from their site “SMSthem is a Group Messaging service for all Zain Post Paid (Contract) subscribers. Registration to the service is FREE, and there are no monthly fees. Subscribers will be charged 10 Fils for every message delivered to a group member, and 20 Fils for the initial message sent to 807. The BIGGER your list the more you SAVE.”

You can have upto five groups, each having 30 contacts. I had to edit 90 numbers for mom, she already had 3 groups. I was either going to have to go through every group and edit all numbers (delete/add) or start over again.

I couldn’t delete the whole group at once, I had to go to each number and delete by selecting the number and then click on delete. Keyboard strokes aren’t considered as inputs. You can’t use the delete key button nor the shift/ctrl for multiple selections!

There is no search feature so I can search for a particular number in a group.

I had to add each number individually.

Number aren’t sorted. They are sorted in some way and it isn’t in the way you entered them or ascending/descending. The first group, they were sorted in an ascending order. The other two groups, I would find some numbers are listed in a way I entered them, but only a sub-group of the group itself!

I ended up entering 85 numbers, so 5 numbers are missing and I don’t know which ones are they so I had to go through it again!!!! crossing numbers I found …

Mom saves about half the amount by using this service for her “jam3eyat el-eslah” contacts.

This is a good feature, that I believe my mother knew about from Zain SMSes to their clients.