Best way to takle IoT comm needs during development phase?

[Dev-i9]

Hi Guys and Gals...

I am planning a "contraption" that willbe composed of a GSM/GPRS (mostly SMS send/receive) enabled Hardware and a mobile app (optional)

The thing is, during development, the GSM module needs a SIM card, and even if I could use one of my cards, this would be like using Thor's Hammer to drive a nail.
Then it occoured to me that I had seen some pub for a "free" iot solution that also had a testing period, so I started googling...
Found a bunch, and I cannot decide wich to choose for my testing/develpment needs...
Usually during development phase, the usage is much more significant than after full deployement, over the same time period... and to top it all, I have NO IDEA of of many sms I can send/receive with each Mb of data...

So... should I just buy a prepaid card and use it "as is" , since it will be mostly SMS and these are usually illimited, or shoud I go with a M2M SIM card provider from the start?

 

[hatzisn]

Why would you even consider sending SMSs while there is the GPRS solution which you can use to post messages to a web server or an MQTT server? It will be definitely cheaper than paying for SMSs for each message.

 

[Dev-i9]

Why would you even consider sending SMSs while there is the GPRS solution which you can use to post messages to a web server or an MQTT server? It will be definitely cheaper than paying for SMSs for each message.

Simply because of mainly 2 reasons.

1rst, I never used MQTT and I don't like having to trust a third middleware to get a simple task one.
2nd, even if MQTT solution would be cheaper, I don't see it being simpler...

And at the end, having the final user setting up the MQTT for his device would be, in my opinion, giving him a nuclear fusion machine to light up a light bulb.