5 Ways to SMS for free

Katie Fehrenbacher, Monday, March 12, 2007 at 9:04 PM PT Comments (165)

A lot of us are still avid text messagers, not because we enjoy paying our carrier those tiring toll (or package) fees, but because it’s still one of the most reliable ways to get a text-based message to a cell phone user — not everyone has mobile IM clients or uses mobile email services.

Even web-based services are starting to recognize that, and recently there have been more and more companies launching “free” SMS options — most often free for those users who want to send a text to a cell phone via the web and email.

Sending free SMS from the Internet isn’t a new idea at all and companies have been developing the bridge between email and SMS for years. By now it’s a simple and easy service to set up and companies have started adding these services as a feature to bring in eyeballs.

Startups are also starting to get more creative with the business model (which was previously severely lacking) as well as the technology solution. At the same time they are learning to add privacy and best practices functions. Remember much of the time receiving the SMS message costs, and some of the services like free bulk messaging could have some not-so-nice spam potential. Be careful about signing up for any ol’ service and check out this list of good characteristics of SMS web services.

1). TeleFlip: TeleFlip has always been a favorite way to send “free” texts via email: ‘phone number’@teleflip.com. They still offer that service which they now call FlipOut, but they are also trying to turn their technology into a working business. I haven’t been able to test the new service yet (shown at DEMO), which is supposed to be out sometime this month, but they say it forwards your emails to your SMS inbox for free — 5,000 messages for per month. Hopefully they have a good management tool, as email spam can fill an SMS inbox pretty quickly and receiving text fees still apply.

2). Peekamo: Founded just November 2006 and based in Toronto according to their web site, Peekamo says they are different than other web-based SMS free sites, as both the receiver and sender don’t pay for the message. How do they manage that? — they say ad-sponsored messages, and using a protocol called short message peer to peer, (unlike the more common email-SMS method). When I sent a message from the web site to myself, it was sponsored by Sharp and had a link to Sharp’s web site www.moretosee.com. It’s still in beta, but is adding other social features.

3). Gizmo SMS: SIPphone has more than its fair share of sweet mobile services like the Gizmo Project, and earlier this month they also added a free web-based SMS service. The service works for dozens of countries and has a model ‘terms of service’ and privacy assurance sections. It’s not rocket science, but shows how these services are easy enough to create that they can be used to market the company’s other money-making solutions.

4). TxtDrop: TxtDrop founder 22-year-old Nate Kapitanski got some flack over his SMS MySpace widget and web service last year — the site didn’t launch with privacy terms and didn’t have an About section describing the company or its goals. He says the whole thing was a learning experience which helped make the site much better. As a result he added a privacy policy, email blocking, limited the number of messages that could be sent per minute, and says your phone number is now hidden in the MySpace code. Kapitanski, who only works on the project part time, also recently released a Mac OS dashboard SMS widget and says he is working on a Vista text gadget that could be out as early as April. There still isn’t a clear about section, but if you email the info address on the site, Kapitanski will probably oblige you on details you want to know.

5). Your carrier!? Yes, its true, some carriers have some limited web-to SMS and email to SMS services. On Verizon Wireless’ vtext.com site you can send a text to a Verizon wireless cell phone user, and send an SMS via email to “verizon wireless phone number”@vtext.com. Sprint has a similar web based service to text Sprint customers. They still get some money the more times people text using most solutions, so why not get more people to text their customers.

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165 comments so far

March 12th, 2007
9:35 PM PT

4INFO offers a customizable “Textme” widget which allows the sending of text messages to the widget’s owner at no charge to the sender (see http://www.4info.net/textme/create.jsp). People are placing these widgets on blogs, on MySpace pages, and on other social networking sites but I have no idea how pervasive they are. Mine seems to work and I get very little SMSpam.

March 12th, 2007
9:49 PM PT
Shabbir said:

There is a similar service provided by Airtel (one of India’s largest wireless service provider). The service allows email-to-sms and sms-to-inbox_email_service. Works superbly. I believe the mobile subscriber has to pay as little as 15 INR (less than half a cent) monthly to activate and use the service with no limit on the number of messages.

March 13th, 2007
12:29 AM PT
Frank said:

I wonder how sites like TxDrop are making money? It is a free service with very little advertisement potential.

March 13th, 2007
1:10 AM PT
2ni said:

gizmosms doesn’t seem to be reliable (at least for Switzerland). I never received the sms I ent…

March 13th, 2007
2:09 AM PT
Chetan said:

GizmoSMS didn’t work for Airtel and Reliance in Bangalore, India.

March 13th, 2007
3:06 AM PT
Erik said:

Gizmo is terminating their messages by spamming all the carrier SMS email gateways.

I doubt that the carriers will allow them to do this very long. They’ll need to get a shortcode and pay like everyone else.

March 13th, 2007
3:20 AM PT

All the carriers have email-SMS gateways…you just have to know the carrier when you send the msg.

March 13th, 2007
5:12 AM PT
NatC said:

My colleague Stéphane (http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephanedelbecque/) launched an IM-to-SMS solution at AOL France 3 years ago. Hasn’t it been deployed in the US still?

March 13th, 2007
5:55 AM PT
Archer said:

To send a text message to one or more Sprint phones there are two (2) other options: http://messaging.sprintpcs.com or send an e-mail to <10DigitPhoneNumber>@Messaging.SprintPCS.com

March 13th, 2007
6:14 AM PT
anonymous said:

FREE is not really FREE in US, is it?

You can send it free but the receiver needs to have a SMS Plan for which he/she pays.

Unless the carriers adopt a model where incoming SMS is FREE - it is not really FREE. Someone in the chain is paying.

March 13th, 2007
6:43 AM PT

Frank, companies like TxtDrp aren’t making much money yet — its still a part time project for the creator.

Anonymous, yes true, in the US, the receiver pays for many of these solutions (not all), I think I made that clear in the article.

For any lost messages, the email-SMS method isnt reliable 100% of the time, its the nature of the service.

March 13th, 2007
9:40 AM PT

There’s an even easier way - AIM lets you send SMS for free. Messsages are sent by SMS. The person who receives it can also respond and you get the response by IM.

You can keep frequently texted people on your Buddy List.

It beats giving out your (or your friends) mobile numbers to companies you’ve never heard of.

http://blog.agrawals.org/2007/03/06/text-to-self-buy-milk/

March 13th, 2007
10:17 AM PT
Nate said:

Cool article, Katie!

March 13th, 2007
11:07 AM PT
JT said:

Do any of these services support sending Chinese/Japanese characters (unicode) to subscribers of US wireless operators (T-Mobile, Verizon, Cingular, etc), assuming the receiver has a Chinese-capable handset? Sending Chinese and Japanese text messages phone-to-phone in the USA is rarely a problem, but sending through web-based apps seems to be trickier.

March 13th, 2007
11:23 AM PT
Bryan Price said:

AIM has had an SMS gateway for sometime. I’ve added all of my family’s numbers to my buddy list, and send away. I even get replies back.

Yahoo! Messenger looks to have this (although I didn’t see any way to keep the phone number or link a name to it.) MSN will send an SMS if you have that person’s phone number entered in their contact information.

March 13th, 2007
11:43 AM PT
Kaan said:

We want to add to our site SMS capability for a minimal fee, does anybody know how we can get cheap SMS , All the bulk carrier charger lot of money per SMS

March 13th, 2007
11:44 AM PT
Mich said:

Just signed up for Peekamo.com and sent a message to a friend. She got it right away.
Great article Katie

March 13th, 2007
12:33 PM PT
Markus said:

Saw the story on Digg too

http://digg.com/tech_deals/Top_5_Ways_To_SMS_For_Free

Digg it!

March 13th, 2007
1:39 PM PT
Mark said:

Send messages, applications, ringtones and pictures for free to your cell phone. No signup, no money, no hassle.

http://mindfulmusings.net/cellupload

March 13th, 2007
2:04 PM PT
James said:

Cingular/AT&T has a text tool you can use from the “media” section of their site. I’m not sure if you have to know which network the user’s # is on. Or, you can email (for AT&T customers) WIRELESS#@mmode.com.

March 13th, 2007
2:08 PM PT

[...] over at GigaOM wrote up a neat little roundup of some free SMS tools you can use to send out for free. She points out the usual caveats: these services could be used [...]

March 13th, 2007
2:25 PM PT

[...] gasit via GigaOM 5 site-uri de FREE SMS [SMS gratuit], si am vazut ca unul din cele 5 a fost mentionat si de [...]

March 13th, 2007
2:39 PM PT

All those services works mainly for the US and EU.
SMS will never be free at all and easy to bring global support because this service is managed by the companies and not all they respect the standards or they uses different planning systems or something.

March 13th, 2007
3:05 PM PT
Greg Harris said:

I’m not sure I understand the value of sending a single message at a time from a web page. As someone else mentioned, all you need to do is add them to your AIM buddy list and you can sent it.

SMS becomes useful when you add 2-way interactivity.

Our service at http://www.mobivity.com allows you to receive incoming messages on a short code, and do bulk messages as well. You can interact with the sender and provide dynamic, relevant information as a response.

And by the way, no SMS is free. The receiver is always paying through their wireless plan. Even when using the carrier email gateways.

March 13th, 2007
3:49 PM PT

[...] Worker Links for March 13th, 2007 Our big sister site GigaOM has 5 Ways to SMS for Free by Katie Fehrenbacher. Katie mentions TeleFlip, Peekamo, Gizmo SMS, and TxtDrop as [...]

March 13th, 2007
4:25 PM PT
Al said:

Actually Peekamo is free sms, because they don’t use smtp messaging like others do and you don’t have to worry about which carrier the recipient is with, they use SMPP messaging. The receiver does not pay. Ofcourse, in the US this is not the case since most carriers double dip and charge the sender and the receiver. In Canada and the rest of the world only the sender pays.

So there is such a thing as free SMS, now if only the US Carriers would get with it and follow a universal standard. We can all use Peekamo the way it was meant to be.

March 13th, 2007
4:27 PM PT
Al said:

In regards to single messaging, Peekamo also offers multi-recipient messaging, by allowing you to create groups that you can send a one-to-all message. Group messages can also be replied to from your phone.

March 13th, 2007
4:28 PM PT
jeff said:

Zemble.com has a really good interface for sending free messages and incorporates social networking aspects to make it much easier.

March 13th, 2007
4:30 PM PT
Steve said:

I agree… Zemble’s interface (www.zemble.com) is excellent. It also remembers your contacts and lets you create groups of friends to message, saving you time the more you use it.

March 13th, 2007
4:41 PM PT

[...] notte a zonzo per la rete Leggo proprio adesso [ via digg ] questo interessantissimo articolo 5 Ways to SMS for free, fra tutti conoscevo solo Gizmo SMS, che utilizzo spesso per comunicare con il colleghi e amici. [...]

March 13th, 2007
4:43 PM PT
Rekzai said:

Thanks a lot, I’ve been using sites like Gizmo SMS ..

March 13th, 2007
4:46 PM PT
phil said:

Check this out http://www.gotext.org. You can send web based sms directly from your phone with the cost of 1 eurocent (against 10 that carriers usually charge) and it works!

Their site is under reconstruction but it will be up very soon.

March 13th, 2007
4:51 PM PT
Nick said:

The article says “5 Ways to SMS for free”, how does gotext fit into this?

March 13th, 2007
4:58 PM PT
Whiteboard said:

I want to hear more about these companies…you gave us a taste, but I need specifics about how they work. For example how does Peekamo make it so that you as the receiver of a message don’t pay SMS fees? I guess that I could just jet over to their website and find out…

Shredder

March 13th, 2007
5:08 PM PT
Drew said:

Cingular’s email to txt is the cell number @cingularme.com.

The mmode address still works but you have limits as to what you can send.

Just about any Cingular/Ex-AT&T Wireless contract plan (not prepaid) has free inbound texts.

March 13th, 2007
5:11 PM PT
john said:

Waoh, Peekamo is being really dishonest!

Plastered all over their site is the claim that messages are free for reciepients in Canada and the US.

Then there is a tiny * which points to: Text messages sent using Peekamo.com is free for all countries. Text messages received in the USA are charged at standard text messaging rate, excluding unlimited incoming text messaging plans. USA users can choose not to have text messages arrive on their phone, only in their online inbox.

That is really really dishonest!

March 13th, 2007
5:16 PM PT
Alisa said:

What about Reporo and Nimbuzz?

March 13th, 2007
5:22 PM PT
Joy said:

Atleast they tell you right on their home page.

Most Carriers don’t even tell you that when you send a message from their website the recipient is charged.

I don’t really care, I have unlimited incoming anyways, I just like the fact that my number is not shown on the message and people can still reply to me.

Maybe we should start a gigaom petition to get US carriers to stop charging for incoming messages.

March 13th, 2007
5:24 PM PT
phillip said:

aim msn yahoo jabber skype all have sms capabilities. but dont forget who your txt is being charged be it loosing thier txt allotment out of the bucket or a per usage charge for each msgs and in the states its 15 cents for every msg recived on the big national carriers.ringtones wallpapers and all should be done on the pc not sms which is just stupid. buy a phone with bluetooth and make the carrier not cripple it. and come on who pays for ringtones? only a fool with too much money.

March 13th, 2007
5:27 PM PT
john said:

Joy,

I just tested peekamo with a friend, and he tried to reply to a message I sent him from the site. He got a message back to his phone “support: we could not send a message to the number Yes, please check the number and try again.. [Aquos, there's more to see]“

I’d recommend Zemble.com if you like the reply without having people know your cell phone number. They use user names as well.

Teleflip is also always a good solution for sending messages.

March 13th, 2007
5:31 PM PT
Joy said:

I don’t know if you were talking to me John, but I think you did exactly what I did the first time I used it.

You have to answer with the Peekamo id you get on the message:

Peekamo Id then your message.

There is a full help on the faqs page.

March 13th, 2007
5:35 PM PT
Drew said:

Oh…forgot Google Send-to-Phone (also available as an extension for Firefox)

http://www.google.com/sendtophone

March 13th, 2007
5:45 PM PT
March 13th, 2007
5:56 PM PT
Trackgirl said:

I am with rogers wireless in Canada and I get a lousy 125 txt msg credits a month. now thankfully incoming is free, but only for SMPP. If someone sends me an TXT MSG from the rogers.com site, I get hit with a nice 15cent charge!

I love peekamo! I can send from my desktop when I am infront of it, and I can reply from my phone. I was tricky to remember, but you have to put the ID of the person you’re Peekamoing then a space then your msg. I joined the Just Wanna Talk group too - its fun.

Best of all NO ONE NEEDS TO KNOW or will EVER GET my cell number! And I have not seen one bit of spam. Gotta love that

Big Fan. Keep up the great Articles Kristie! And Peekamo - nice work, EH!

March 13th, 2007
6:05 PM PT
nick said:

John,

zemble is NOT FREE to RECEIVE. I registered and got a message from the carrier to reply with “READ”. That means zemble is SMTP based, and not real sms, SMPP. Shame on you. it cost me to reply - so there for it cost me 10cents to register. Shame Shame Shame.

as for Peekamo - just registered. code came very quickly, and no need to “reply with read”. True SMPP. and saved me some $.

AIM, Yahoo, and MSN - all use SMTP, so while its free to send - no no no, it is NOT free to receive.

If you like your friends, why would you get them to pay for your msgs, unless you are a mooch!

Oh, and I just peekamo’d my buddy in the US. If I had sent it from my phone, it would have cost me long distance text msg rate - so that is more money saved by using Peekamo. He got the Peekamo on is computer, so it was free to receive for him. Now I wonder if this Peekamo thing works to txt my friends in the UK.

March 13th, 2007
6:06 PM PT

[...] 5 Ways To SMS For Free Filed under: Uncategorized — recar @ 12:54 am Top 5 Ways To SMS For Free GigaOM lists the top 5 ways to send FREE text messages.[news] [technology] [tech [...]

March 13th, 2007
6:09 PM PT
Adam said:

TxtDrop works great for me and their dashboard widget makes sending a text a quick easy thing that I don’t even need to think about. F12, type, send, done.

March 13th, 2007
6:25 PM PT
trackgirl said:

I feel like I need to set something straight here about all the companies listed.

All EXCEPT Peekamo.com use SMTP. Peekamo is the only one using real SMPP. That means in Canada, if you use any of the services, except Peekamo, you will get charged to recieve and read the message. No sure about the USA where I think everyone pays to receive. But for Canada and the rest of the world should use Peekamo. Why the heck would you want to pay to receive a message - from anyone.

March 13th, 2007
6:43 PM PT

[...] Of course, most of these are Web-based, but GigaOm did a nice job of putting together five ways to text message for free using offerings from: Teleflip, Peekamo, Gizmo SMS, TxtDrop and some carrier websites. Article [...]

March 13th, 2007
7:01 PM PT

Great list! hope they all won’t be sticking adverts at the end of each text message though!

March 13th, 2007
7:05 PM PT
Amin said:

MobiK is another solution, pretty heavy usage in Asia as far as my experience go.

March 13th, 2007
9:18 PM PT

[...] GigaOM » 5 Ways to SMS for free (tags: phone SMS tools lifehacks) [...]

March 13th, 2007
9:19 PM PT

[...] read more | digg story [...]

March 13th, 2007
10:58 PM PT
varun said:

Free !! Nothing is Free in this world . be it sms or anything else.

One way of free SMS is to use Yahoo messenger in India.. But that is also limited to 2-3 msgs.

@Shabbir - I have not heard of any such service here. Can u share more details ?

March 14th, 2007
12:18 AM PT

[...] read more | digg story Posted March 14, 2007 Related Law School Student Articles: [...]

March 14th, 2007
1:00 AM PT
cwhisperer said:

http://www.m4u.eu it doesn’t offer 2 way sms, but delivery to over 180 countries and nearly 600 operators are under 10 seconds thanks to intelligent routing.

March 14th, 2007
1:10 AM PT
MomKicker said:

It’s not really free. If you want free sms you must install Yahoo Widget with a small plugin - you can download it from here: http://gsm-sms.tk/

March 14th, 2007
4:42 AM PT
Klaus said:

T-mobile is offering email to sms too.

March 14th, 2007
5:14 AM PT

unfortunately none of these seem to work for european network :(

even gizmoSMS doesn’t work, despite listing my home-country (austria) in the form.

March 14th, 2007
7:15 AM PT

Good stuff!

March 14th, 2007
8:10 AM PT

[...] read more | digg story [...]

March 14th, 2007
9:17 AM PT

[...] Ways to SMS for free-Click Here. [...]

March 14th, 2007
9:46 AM PT

GizmoSMS didn’t work for me in Singapore too!

March 14th, 2007
10:48 AM PT
anonymous said:

To make SMS Truly FREE a service like the ones listed in this article OR an SMS aggregator needs to do the following

  1. absorb the costs that the end user pays.
  2. There is a FTEU program (Free to the end user) that most mobile carrier companies are currently discussing.
  3. Sprint is not a part of these discussions, but Cingular (the new ATT), TMobile and Verizon are.
  4. Sample per min rate is around 7c from TMobile. Other carriers will charage differently.

TO really make it FREE for both sender and receiver, any of the above companies listed here needs to absorb 7c costs per minute (maybe less if they do it in volume) and then have a margin on top of that so that they can make money.

Advertising is a way to do this. However, 7c per min for Advertising is just super expensive!!. Plus FCC will come out with a ruling that Telemarketing via SMS is intrusive and a new Do Not Receive SMS ruling gets into effect.

All in all this is not fascinating and se*y market to be in. Unless the carriers make Incoming SMS Free.

March 14th, 2007
3:12 PM PT

[...] 5 Ways to SMS for free - [GigaOM] digg_url = ‘http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/five-ways-to-sms-for-free.html’; digg_bgcolor = “#”; ( function() { var ds=typeof digg_skin==’string’?digg_skin:”; var h=80; var w=52; if(ds==’compact’) { h=18; w=120; } var u=typeof digg_url==’string’?digg_url:(typeof DIGG_URL==’string’?DIGG_URL:window.location.href); document.write(”"); } )() Author: Kyle Pott Posted: Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 5:12 pm Tags: cellphone, sms, technology Bookmark/Share This! Leave a Reply [...]

March 14th, 2007
6:20 PM PT

There is a wonderful Yahoo Widget called SMS.

Google it. You won’t find it at Yahoo…

March 15th, 2007
3:54 AM PT
Anonymous said:

In my earlier post - it is 7c per message not per minute.

The other big obstacle is the character limit. 160 characters per SMS message is standard. Some carriers only allow 140 characters. Sending SMS to Asian countries makes this limit half - 70-80 characters (due to double byte)

Sending a message + advertisement + maybe a response window (widget style) is tough in 80 characters or 160 characters.

Cheers

March 15th, 2007
4:04 AM PT

[...] 5 Ways to SMS for free TeleFlip, Peekamo, Gizmo SMS, TxtDrop, Your Carrier? (tags: SMS) [...]

March 15th, 2007
4:45 AM PT

[...] list of free SMS service over web http://gigaom.com/2007/03/12/free-sms/ [...]

March 15th, 2007
6:24 PM PT

[...] it here: 5 Ways to SMS for free » Filed under gadgets by admin at 19:23. | Going [...]

March 15th, 2007
7:38 PM PT
Rob said:

Gizmo doesn’t work to Vodafone Australia. One other thing, over here SMS and MMS messages are free to receive, but cost the sender.

March 16th, 2007
1:57 AM PT
Alex said:

I’ll add some more about GizmoSMS: Neither SMS to Switzerland nor to Singapore arrive where they should and Gizmo isn’t really taking notice of any of the numerous complaints… Of course it’s a free service, but I still wouldn’t entrust any SMS to their gateway.

March 16th, 2007
8:25 AM PT

CallWave offers an SMS widget for OS X’s dashboard, Google, and Vista!

March 16th, 2007
8:39 AM PT

More than 5 ways… You should try Crickee at http://crickee.com and let us know your feed back. Free sms from pc to pc, from pc to mobile, from mobile to mobile.
Free for sender AND receiver. You might be charged a few coins by your carrier for the data. Check it out and enjoy!

March 16th, 2007
8:53 AM PT

[...] Want to send free SMS? Here you go, gigaom.com [...]

March 16th, 2007
4:36 PM PT

Yahoo Tech too.

March 16th, 2007
4:38 PM PT

Yahoo tech too. Not the post before this.

March 19th, 2007
12:01 AM PT

I have recently checked out http://www.mobik.com it too is a free sms tool for Web to mobile. The interface is superb and very user friendly, letting you drag and drop up to 25 numbers for one single message. There is no cost for this service but you have to join the ‘opt in’ community, as the cost of the service is carried by the advertiser. The ad that is played is only 5 seconds long. It doesn’t stream, as it is cached for instant play when you send.
The only limitation I can see is the number of gloabl locations you can get a free SMS delivered is only limited by avertisers in country to carry the cost. So the reach of this tool will grow as the MobiK subscriber numbers grow, hence bringing advertisers to pay for the service.
They have even put measures in place to prevent sms spammers getting hold of this service and hijacking it their own promotions.

check it out, its great! http://www.mobik.com

Jeremy

March 19th, 2007
5:19 PM PT
Joy said:

I am an avid free SMSer. I think in the last little while I have tried every single one, infact even got spammed by one or two of them and had to ask them to stop and remove me from their list.

Mobik was one of the ones I tried, and though I found the interface intuitive, it lagged a bit when typing the message. Maybe this is something they have fixed. However, what I didn’t like is that if there was no marketing message for the area I wanted to send my message to, they would not let me send the message.

In fact I tried 4 numbers within the US and kept getting the “There is no marketing message for that area” message, until I finally gave up and moved along.

Hooray for the interface, but Boo for the service.

March 29th, 2007
4:55 PM PT

[...] 5 ways to TXT for free - Bypass TXT message charges [...]

March 29th, 2007
10:00 PM PT
Short Stack said:

Yeah, MobiK isn’t available in the US or Canada. It looks like it’s focus is in Australia.

I haven’t had any issues with lag - it works perfectly and definitely the sexiest SMS tool I’ve seen out there.

March 31st, 2007
3:49 PM PT

[...] 5 Ways to SMS for free [gigaom.com] [...]

March 31st, 2007
7:20 PM PT

[...] GigaOM » 5 Ways to SMS for free [...]

April 1st, 2007
12:51 PM PT

[...] have a crappy phone plan that charges you for every text you send from your phone, you might like this list of ways to send texts for free. Now if only I could find a way to receive them for free as [...]

April 1st, 2007
1:53 PM PT
ttiqq.com said:

GigaOM » 5 Ways to SMS for free…

Tips on how to send SMS for freee because everyone likes to do this and the article is not very good but whatever, it gives u the basic idea of how to send crap for free because everyone likes free shit yaaaa…

April 1st, 2007
10:56 PM PT
Finbarr said:

Anyone with an Irish mobile phone can use this tool to send free texts from the PC / Mac desktop:

http://meteorjsms.googlepages.com/

April 3rd, 2007
10:57 PM PT
ttiqq.com said:

5 Ways to SMS for free…

Sending free SMS from the Internet isn’t a new idea at all and companies have been developing the bridge between email and SMS for years. By now it’s a simple and easy service to set up and companies have started adding these services as a feature …

April 5th, 2007
11:35 PM PT

[...] 6, 2007Top 5 Ways To SMS For Free GigaOM lists the top 5 ways to send FREE text messages.read more | digg story Filed under Technology updates by [...]

April 8th, 2007
11:27 AM PT
Justin said:

Does anyone know how to check your text messages from your inbox from another phone or computer? Similar to how you can check your voicemail from any other phone? Email me if you know a way, thanks…
jcyarnall0@frostburg.edu

April 10th, 2007
3:56 PM PT
Joy said:

Peekamo just changed. The word Sexy comes to mind. Anyways, just thought I’d update everyone here since this is where I found out about Peekamo.

April 14th, 2007
11:21 AM PT
Kim said:

So I have a question. If you sent someone a message on peekamo, they get it. What number do they reply to? And I seriously don’t get the Id space then message thing. I need an example!
kthnx!

April 18th, 2007
5:11 PM PT
Phire said:

Another free way to SMS for free is transfering money through text messaging
http://sapphiremobile.wordpress.com/

April 20th, 2007
2:34 AM PT
Joy said:

Okay, this is how it works. When you send the message the person sees the number 23333. Your Peekamo ID say it is “Kim”, shows up in the message. So the message will say:

Kim: Txt’n 4 Free on Peekamo.com.

The person would press reply and type:

Peek Kim wow that is awesome.

That’s it. Not so complicated is it. The groups work the same way. And there are other commands too that you can use, like status, find, on, off, and some other ones.

Anyways, give it shot, it works for me. I have 150 plan, so I use those when I’m mobile and I use peekamo the other times from my PC and I’ve never used up all 150, but before I used to have a 500 plan and I would always use it.

April 23rd, 2007
5:13 PM PT

[...] Find 5 more free SMS services here Posted April 22, 2007 Related Law School Student Articles: [...]

April 24th, 2007
8:50 AM PT
steve campbel said:

i use http://www.create-ringtone.com to create and send FREE custom ringtones, wallpaper, mp3 and video files to cell phones around the world

April 30th, 2007
9:41 PM PT
bla said:

A few more free SMS websites are listed at http://www.blatext.com/freesms.html but most seem to have some limitations

May 9th, 2007
10:01 AM PT
Steve said:

Free SMS indeed been around for a while. One of the best free sms sites I’ve found (and I think it works in US - it definitely works in UK) is Wadja.com . You just have to register, and upload a photo, and then you can send free sms to your heart’s content.

May 11th, 2007
4:42 AM PT
vinothkumar said:

Free SMS indeed been around for a while. One of the best free sms sites I’ve found (and I think it works in US - it definitely works in UK) is Wadja.com . You just have to register, and upload a photo, and then you can send free sms to your heart’s content

May 17th, 2007
3:22 AM PT
vinith said:

Okay, this is how it works. When you send the message the person sees the number 23333. Your Peekamo ID say it is “Kim”, shows up in the message. So the message will say:

Kim: Txt’n 4 Free on Peekamo.com.

The person would press reply and type:

Peek Kim wow that is awesome.

That’s it. Not so complicated is it. The groups work the same way. And there are other commands too that you can use, like status, find, on, off, and some other ones.

May 17th, 2007
10:39 PM PT
MIKE said:

Hello
Can someone help me with my problem im here at brunei and i been looking for a free sms installer but i cannot find any. I what to txt my friends in the Philippines.
Can someone help me..

tHANKZ.

MIKE

May 21st, 2007
2:21 PM PT
Nudeln said:

I’ve found a page where you can send one free sms a day! You could ad it to you’re sms-links-page to help other users to find it. The adress is http://www.sms-one-free.com

June 9th, 2007
10:22 AM PT
Aryan said:

Here is a website from which u can send free SMS and free MMS :

http://www.seasms.com

June 12th, 2007
5:31 AM PT
ketan Tailor said:

hi u can send up to sm level on dis site

June 18th, 2007
6:54 AM PT
Andy said:

Aussie users can try http://www.noodleinvite.com.au, which lets you create and manage SMS invitations as well send single texts.

June 25th, 2007
2:20 AM PT
Dan Anos said:

Those providers mostly cover US networks, if you’re from the UK, then what I recommend is http://www.freebiesms.co.uk

There are other versions of this website, in france (www.envoyezsms.com), spain (www.mensajetexto.com) and a host of other european countries.

June 25th, 2007
12:12 PM PT
DD said:

Well teleflip software seems very simple but still cant get why would i want my emails forwarded to my cell as a text message?
If i do so i will have to pay prob $10 per month, now the email will be only 100 or so characters so i will be able to read the begiinng hi how are u balbalbla and cut !????

in the other hand get internet acces for $5 acces your gmail as shown above and get your email full (50 pages) and reply

I thnk text message to connect with customers and friends so mass text messaging service makes sense and make money.

it seems on this blog everyone is looking for FREE FREE stuffs well there is nothing free, you will get advertisement or so

anyway many companies, provide free service and they all not making monay they just all hope amd pray to get acquire by big companies who will then trun it around advertis eyou then you will opt out or remove your info but the fat is you started to get in for a reason that did not follow wiht you cause of the greed of the human nature lol

cheers to all
I love text message and if I am going to have to increase my plan to get free text therefore there is a contradiction the free comes with my plan being increased to lets say $10 for unlimted therefore lets just use your phone and have fun

DD

June 29th, 2007
5:24 PM PT
John B. said:

I personally think the best option is:

http://www.text4free.net

It has the most options (such as sending multiple copies), and you can send MMS (picture messages) for free, too. It’s the best.

July 4th, 2007
8:29 AM PT
matt said:

Gizmo is not working at all…..

July 9th, 2007
10:24 AM PT
Geoff Lan said:

i actually used peekamo. a lot of my friends have been using it too. pretty good stuff.

July 13th, 2007
4:48 AM PT
Nudeln said:

Send a free, fast and reliable SMS for free to the whole world without any hassling or registration - TeXt one Free

July 18th, 2007
8:19 PM PT

[...] GigaOM 5 Ways to SMS for free « “A lot of us are still avid text messagers, not because we enjoy paying our carrier those tiring toll (or package) fees, but because it’s still one of the most reliable ways to get a text-based message to a cell phone user — not everyone has mobile IM (tags: sms services web cellphone communication) [...]

July 19th, 2007
3:13 PM PT

You can send free SMS text messages to anywhere in the world from
http://www.actiontelecom.co.uk/free_international_text_messages.php
Unlike 99% of the other “free SMS” websites out there, there are NO charges to the message recipient!

July 24th, 2007
7:13 PM PT
rowel said:

itxtmo.com sends Philippine SMS to USA for free. In addition, receiver gets a copy of SMS on their email and itxtmo.com inbox. itxtmo.com has SMS blogging tools as well and now being used by Philippine radio stations to receive listeners requests.

July 26th, 2007
5:35 AM PT

[...] for some free SMS Services. Most services ask for money after a fixed number of messages:read this fabulous article. Since most services still offer USA/Canada only options, I added some of my own findings: 1) [...]

July 31st, 2007
1:45 PM PT
Pat said:

love peekamo. all the other services usually charge the receiver. peekamo offers it for free but without the spam.

August 23rd, 2007
8:21 PM PT
JR said:

Great titbits all, so does anyone know of a way to download IM services such as yahoo, msn, gtalk onto your cell phones? Another alternative to sms is to use IM - of course the US carrier will use your local sms out of the bundle you have - this is esp good if you txt int’t. T mobile charges 0.15 c, AT&T 0.20. Anyone know a free service that allows u to sms to Sri Lanka from the US?

August 27th, 2007
10:26 AM PT

[...] 12:26 PM There may be some help in this link: 5 Ways to SMS for free GigaOM Also check the feedback at the bottom of the [...]

August 28th, 2007
5:11 PM PT

[...] FREE SMS SERVICES: Yahoo Mail Skype AIM Other tips on Free SMS services [...]

August 29th, 2007
1:13 PM PT

[...] read more | digg story [...]

August 30th, 2007
7:44 PM PT

Try this site:
Absolut gratis - 100% dispatch guaranteed Frie SMS service.

http://www.sfree24.com/free-sms-gratis-sms-news.php
http://www.sfree24.com/

September 18th, 2007
12:02 PM PT
durrani said:

if your in canada this will interest you..

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=770604&k=mobilemonday%2520toronto

guys from the above mentioned services will be there.

October 1st, 2007
4:03 PM PT

[...] video clip online GigaOM lists the top 5 ways to send FREE text messages.read more | digg [...]

October 3rd, 2007
4:09 AM PT

[...] read more | digg story [...]

October 21st, 2007
2:07 AM PT

[...] lists the top 5 ways to send FREE text messages.read more | digg story [?] Share [...]

November 2nd, 2007
5:30 AM PT