Because out of all the various notification options, they are the most likely to get noticed. Emails can get filtered to spam, or just missed in the deluge of e-mails that I get every day. Push notifications are a bit better, but I frequently miss those as well, and they only notify once (although they remain on screen/in the message center until I acknowledge them). Plus, as you mentioned they are one off temporary notifications that are (apparently at least) not stored.
SMS on the other hand, is significantly better because:
- It notifies me both on my phone and my computer
- Custom ring tones can be set per user, so I can do things like set notifications from Ezlo to have a more aggressive ringtone (assuming, of course, that the notifications from Ezlo are coming in over a unique address)
- If I don’t acknowledge the SMS, my phone will alert me again after two minutes, and once more after another two minutes.
- I can easily scroll back through my SMS history to see when something happened.
As such, it is much more likely that I will receive and be aware of a SMS promptly than for any other communications channel (other than a phone call), so I would like to be able to use it for high-priority notifications such as “Garage door left open” or “Doorbell ring” Even better, if I get both a SMS and a push notification, that really gets my attention!
I haven’t tried Telegram. Worth a shot I suppose! 