Of all of the different ways to communicate in the modern world, one of the best and most popular ways is texting. It’s an easy and highly effective way to communicate with anyone, any time, and anywhere. It requires very little knowledge to use and makes talking with someone on the other side of the world almost effortless. It’s a great way to unite people and create meaningful conversations and interactions incredibly simply. 

The only downside to most texting services is they cost money. They are often inexpensive due to advancements in technology and connectivity, but they still require having a phone and data plan. However, even the cost of texting can be virtually free due to new methods over the years. 

Here is what free texting is and how people can get access to this incredible service for free. 

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How Does Free Texting Work

It’s important to understand how regular texting works to understand how free texting works. Regular texting on phones is known as SMS texting, which stands for “Short Message Service.” 

It’s a highly effective and versatile way to communicate and is very helpful when interacting with various brands of phones. It operates using similar wireless technology to phone calls, which means it’s reliable while only requiring small amounts of data in the cellular network. 

Due to this very fast and lightweight way to communicate on similar technology to phone calls, many people started looking for other ways to communicate that are lightweight, efficient, and cheap. 

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Free Texting

As people were looking for new ways to text, people started experimenting with using online texting to communicate in a very similar medium to cellular texting. This began the development of a large number of different texting services and technologies that allowed them to text in a way that was basically free. 

Free text messaging may seem too good to be true, but in reality, it's a highly viable and useful way to communicate. Many of these texting services have their benefits and drawbacks, but they are all incredibly useful. This makes texting accessible to more people, including those who don’t have access to traditional text messaging services. 

Free text messaging services run on a variety of different mediums to get their message across. Some rely on very similar technologies to SMS messaging, while others tend to be based more on direct messaging and other services that run off of Wi-Fi. 

There are countless ways to get free texting, and all of these services are highly effective and lead to incredible results. 

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Different Ways to Get Free Texting

The biggest benefit of third-party messaging services is developers can create features that benefit their target audiences. 

Check out these different ways to get free texting and see which ones may serve you the best. 

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iMessage

This is Apple’s native app for allowing messaging between all devices directly inside the Apple ecosystem. It’s entirely free for anyone with an Apple product like an iPhone or iPad and mobile devices like Macs. 

Apple’s goal with iMessage was to create a straightforward service while also providing a huge list of features that serve its users in ways that go beyond most other messaging services. 

iMessage is directly integrated with Apple’s products, so the developers made every detail that went into the iMessage design as effective as possible. iMessage has added features that integrate with the rest of the apps on the ecosystem and make using iMessage an incredibly fluid and user-friendly experience. 

While most other third-party texting services have to work around operating systems, iMessage is a first-party texting service with all the benefits of first services. Many people think that iMessage is a better service and experience than every other traditional text messaging service. 

The biggest downside with iMessage is that it is only usable between Apple devices. That means that Android and other phone users cannot usef iMessage and cannot send or receive iMessage texts. While this may not be a huge problem to some people who live in environments where iPhones are the standard phone of choice, it is difficult to transition to texting with non-Apple phones and products. 

Despite this massive hurdle in using iMessage, many Apple users still swear by this messaging service and rarely use anything else. 

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Computer SMS Messaging

Something that many people don’t know is that they can send SMS messages from their computers! It’s a fairly simple process that most people can master fairly quickly with a little practice. 

Here is how: 

1. Open up whatever program or application you use for email. 
2. Create a message. Try to limit the number of characters in the message to 160 because that is the maximum number of characters for an SMS message. 
3. Once you have your message ready to send, enter the phone number to which you want to send the message in the “To” part of the email message box. Don’t include any dashes, punctuation, or spaces. For example, if your phone number is (773)819-2856, enter 7738192856 into the address field of the emailing application. 
4. Next, you need to find out what the recipient’s carrier is. If you are texting yourself, just find out what carrier you are working with, and enter the carrier’s specified email-to-SMS address after the phone number. You can find these specific addresses here. For example, if the number that you are sending an SMS to is under T-Mobile, then the address that you put into the “To” part of the email message box should say “7738192856@tmomail.net”
5. Send the message, and it should show up on the phone within a few moments. 

There are several steps required to text from a computer, but it is easy and helps in a pinch. Keep in mind that email-to-text messages can only go one way, so it’s important to ensure that the recipient can communicate back. 

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Third Party Apps

There are many third-party apps available that will help you communicate with people via texting for free. There are many services available from large technology companies like Google and Facebook and smaller companies that focus on doing something new in the text message medium, like GroupMe or Telegram. 

Due to third-party applications not being bound by a specific type of operating system or data service, these apps provide many features traditional text messaging apps don’t provide. They also provide a way for people to communicate in groups more effectively. 

Native apps and texting methods are slowly catching up to the innovation of these third-party apps, but third-party apps are the place to go if you’re looking for a more specialized experience. 

It’s important to do research on these apps and check what they are best suited for. Some third-party apps are great with group messages, and some are best for one-to-one communication. Find the one that best fits your needs, and work with that. 

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Use Community to Communicate Effectively

While these free text messaging services are highly effective, one of the best ways for Leaders to communicate with their Members is through Community. 

With Community, Leaders communicate freely with the people that they care about. It promotes direct interaction between your Community and its leaders and can lead to incredibly effective communication both ways. 

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Conclusion

While most bulk texting services aren’t very effective in stimulating actual interaction, Community is focused on building interaction into Members' lives in a real way. If you’re looking for the next steps in communicating with your audience, look no further than Community.

Check it out, and get your number today! 

Sources:

How Do Free Texting Apps Work? | My Venture Pad

Are free-texting apps legal? | HowStuffWorks

List Of Email-To-SMS Addresses | AV Tech