Text Messaging

In order to send and receive text messages, you have to add a texting package to your cell phone plan. This option doesn’t usually cost a lot, but it’s just one more expense that you have to pay. The nice thing about text messaging is that you can send and receive messages to anyone who has a cell phone or mobile device with a texting plan. You simply need their phone number. You don’t have to worry about whether or not a person uses the same IM client as you do.

Instant Messaging

There are smartphone apps for all of today’s most popular IM services, so it’s not a problem to add this functionality to your cell phone or mobile device. There are also apps that support a wide variety of different IM services, so you don’t have to download and install separate apps for each one. That being said, there are plenty of people who don’t use IM services at all. Without a text messaging plan, you will be unable to communicate with a significant percentage of cell phone users.

Why Not Both?

IMing is free, and text messaging usually costs extra. There’s no reason not to use both types of messaging services. Whether you end up sending instant messages most of the time, or if you primarily stick with text messages, you’ll be able to communicate with a really wide range of people. Having both options isn’t any more expensive than just having a text messaging plan, and many IM programs have notifications that pop up on your phone’s screen. If being in touch at all times is your top priority, you should consider using text messages and instant messages. In the long run, making use of them both is quick, easy and convenient.

textPlus has been offering free text messages between textPlus users for some time now, but they have recently expanded into the phone call market by releasing textPlus Free Calls.

The service allows free wi-fi calls from the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android phones between textPlus users, but also cheap phone calls to non textPlus users.

It’s a separate app so if you’re already a textPlus user you still need to download the new app from iTunes for  iPhone or iPod or at the Android market for Android phone.

You can now earn free minutes for calling to non textPlus users in the US.

Today, June 14th, TextMeFree.com is 10 years old – that’s a pretty good age for a website – websites come and go on a fairly regular basis, so we’re very happy to be celebrating.

To celebrate our 10 years of promoting and reviewing free SMS services on the web we are running a competition where you can win up to 3,650 free SMS.

Our Birthday Competition

We like Localphone, not just for their incredibly cheap international call charges, or their ease of use, or the fact that you can make wildly discounted international calls directly from your mobile, but also because you can send SMS with Localphone too.

Our competition prize is a Localphone account with enough credit to send 3,650 free SMS, but if you would rather spend that credit on phone calls, you can.

How to enter

To enter our birthday competition, all you have to do is to follow TextMeFree.com on Facebook. That’s it.

As soon as we reach 1,000 fans, we will randomly select a winner.

For more information about the competition, as well as a history of TextMeFree.com over the last 10 years, visit this page on our main site:
Win 3650 Free SMS Credits at Localphone

And, good luck!

gText is a paid Australian based text message service focused on group sms (or bulk sms) – groups such as friends, family and businesses. You can create private and public groups and it’s ideal for parties, meetings, etc, to keep everyone invited and informed.

Anyone within the group can send texts to the group, but the group master has ultimate control over the budget, who can send group sms and who has to pay. The service can be also be used simply as a bulk messaging system with a restricted one-way service.

The service is free to register and when you do so you get 25 free credits. It’s pay-as-you-go with a minimum top up amount of $10.50, and you can earn credits by referring people.

It’s great for family, businesses, clubs and societies… any type of group.

Visit website: gtext.com.au

Learn more about bulk SMS and group SMS at textmefree.com.

You have until 22nd April 2011 to enter the getdialing.com competition to win a Localphone account with €30 credit.

getdialing.com is giving away a free Localphone account with roughly 50 hours of free phone calls – depending on which country you call and whether you call a landline or mobile number. Most phone calls with Localphone cost around €0.01 per minute – even from your mobile phone.

You can use the credit to send SMS too if you prefer. In order to send SMS you need to log into the account and send SMS online from their website to mobile phones anywhere in the world.

Localphone give you a local number for each one of your contacts, meaning you can call anyone in any country from your mobile phone at the cost of a local phone call!

To enter the competition, all you have to do is ‘Like’ getdialing on Facebook. It’s that simple.

Gmail users can send free SMS to their contacts in certain counties and supported mobile networks using the chat functionality in Gmail.

This service is available in the US, but also to several African countries. Here is a list of the African countries and the supported mobile networks in each country:

Ghana
Airtel
MTN
Tigo

Kenya
Airtel
orange
Safaricom

Malawi
Airtel
TNM

Nigeria
Glo
Starcomms

Senegal
orange
Tigo

Tanzania
Vodacom

Uganda
Orange
MTN
Uganda Telecom

Zambia
Airtel
MTN

Other countries that you can SMS via Gmail are: Indonesia, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Philippines and Saudi Arabia.

Here is the Gmail help page with instructions on how to use Gmail to send free SMS or chat messages if you don’t know how to do it:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=106015

More Free SMS Service to Africa

Check out the other free SMS services to Africa at TextMeFree.com:

Free SMS Africa

Will you agree with our choice of free sms jokes, or will you decide to visit our carefully selected cool sms jokes websites? After you’ve laughed at the sms message jokes you can share a sms text joke with your friends via TextMeFree.com

Love SMS, Romantic SMS & Inspirational Love Quotes

• Today I caught myself smiling for no reason… Then I realized I was thinking of you !
• Love is like water: we can fall in it, we can drown in it AND… we can’t live without it!
• Love is being stupid together
• What good is beauty without brains, looks without charm, money without happiness, a smile without feelings, a life without you?
• He said… Do u love me just coz my father left me a fortune?
  She said… No stupid, I’d love u no matter who left you the money!

See more Love SMS at TextMeFree.com

TextMeFree.com is having a bit of a spring clean, which means that we are testing the free SMS services we list and if any are found not to be working then they are being deleted.

This will give our users an improved service. However, if you use a free SMS service from TextMeFree.com and it doesn’t work, please let us know by contacting us or by leaving a review of the site.

International Free SMS

This week we have reviewed all the Worldwide free SMS services – these sites say that you can send free text messages to most countries in the world. We found quite a few that were no longer working, so they’ve gone!

Despite deleting seven sites from our Worldwide SMS category, there are still 35 SMS sites listed.

SMScity

Our favourite at the moment is SMScity. This service started out in the Netherlands, but now it’s an international service and it works very well. It’s not unlimited (although there are ways to earn extra credits), you get one free SMS every day, but it’s a very reliable service.

Other Worldwide Text Services

We also like Skebby because you can send free texts directly from your mobile rather than a computer, and we like unlimitsms.net because it let’s you send unlimited free SMS every day without any registration.

So don’t forget, if TextMeFree.com doesn’t list a free SMS service for the country that you want to text, then just use one of these tried and tested international text message sites.

For your information, the services which were deleted are: email2sms.ru, freetxt.net, freetextmessenger, textbysms, SLinteractive, bulksmsservices.com, txtdrop.net, smsfree4all.

Go to TextMeFree’s International SMS Services

So I thought I’d prepare for you a funny sms or three, all in one place, and all edited to be the funniest text messages ever!

The rest is up to you. You can send these text message jokes using your mobile phone (or cellphone). Or you can send ‘em via one of those free sms sites online. But you must send them, or I will go from being happy to sad and it will ALL be your fault! Hee hee.

Okay, on with the hilarious text messages. Oh, and if you don’t think these are the funniest text messages you’ve ever read then please do get in touch. You can contact me via this e-mail address Hah-hah at YouGottaBeKiddingMe dot com…

Example Funny SMS Messages

• What’s the diff btwn stress, tension and panic? Strss is whn ur wife pregnant, tension whn ur gf pregnant and panic is whn BOTH pregnant!
• How do u keep an idiot amused? Well – and bring ur phone closer! – watch… this… message… until… it goes away!
• Right now, all ovr the wrld, 33% of people now sleeping, 25% wrking or stdying, 29% watching TV/movie, 13% eating, and 1 BOZO now holding mobile in his hand.

Haha, that’s just so funny – especially that last funny text sms message! Or maybe you don’t have a sense of humour? Huh, buddy? Have you thought it might be that?…

Just kiddin’! We all have a sense of humour. And pretty much our sense of humour is unique to each of us. So that’s why I’m going to include a few more hilarious text messages below, to see if ‘they’ tickle your funny bone.

Yep, some more free funny text messages – ah, the joy of free!…

More Example Text Message Jokes

• I wnt U 2 know that our friendship means a lot. Whn U cry, I cry. Whn U laugh, I laugh. And whn U jump out the window… I look down and then… I laugh again!
• Dearly befriended! Do u take me 2 b ur lawful texted mate, 2 have n 2 hold, 2 read dirty quotes n saucy jokes, in txt messaging n poor signal, till low battery do us part?

Ah, I do hope you enjoyed at least one of these hilarious text messages, one of these funny sms listed above. And if you did, please, please do share them with a friend or three. I’m sure you’ll make their day.

Be seein’ u!

Happy New Year! 2011 has started at TextMeFree.com with five new free SMS services added already.

Free text online text services tend to come and go fairly quickly, so if the free SMS service that you’ve been using has gone down, don’t worry, at TextMeFree.com we currently have 275 free SMS services listed!

Easy Uganda

Easy Uganda give free SMS to Uganda and the rest of the world.

The best new service that’s been reviewed and added this January is from Easy Uganda. They offer a worldwide free SMS service as well as free SMS to Uganda, and it works very efficiently with the free texts we sent arriving in seconds.

There is no need to register to use this service and there are no adverts appended to your texts. Let’s hope this service stays online for some time.

Read our review of Easy Uganda, and visit their website here:
www.textmefree.com/detailed/1015.html

Link Uganda

Another new text message service just added also gives free SMS to Uganda, and that’s from Link Uganda. This service is Ugandan only (so we weren’t able to test it).

You need to register to use this service, but they cover all Ugandan networks and offer other services too.

Read our review of Link Uganda.

Five New Free SMS Services

To see a summary of all five new sms services recently added to TextMeFree.com, please visit this page:
www.textmefree.com/new/2011-01-11.html