Users Must Know the Carrier

• To send a free text message, the sender must first know the carrier that supplies service to the intended recipient. If the sender knows the recipient well, she may already know through what carrier the message should be sent. If she doesn't know the recipient very well, or if she simply does not know who the recipient's cell phone carrier is, she can use online tools to discover this critical piece of information. Although a number of online tools offer reverse-number look-up that automatically identifies a phone service provider based on the telephone number, telecommunications professionals rely on FoneFinder.net to instantly provide free, reliable results.
  
  

Some Phones Have Email Addresses

• Resourceful email users can quickly send a free text message in the form of an email. Many carriers allow cell phone users to receive emails as text messages by passing the email through special servers that convert the message to an SMS-compatible text, but users must know the recipient's special email address to employ this service. Some carriers make this information readily available on their websites; Sprint, for example, publishes on its website that its subscribers can receive email text messages sent to their full 10-digit telephone number followed by @messaging.sprintpcs.com. When using email to send a free text message, senders should keep in mind that text messages are limited to 160 characters and should phrase their emails accordingly.
  
  If the carrier does not publish this information on its website, a call to the carrier's customer service department may yield useful information. Ff the carrier does not support email to text translation, it may be necessary to send the text through an alternate channel.
  
  

Websites Send Free Text Messages

• If a sender is unable to find the recipient's wireless email address, or if the carrier does not support email to text conversions, the recipient may still be able to send a free text message using an online website. A number of websites allow users to access the site, enter the recipient's telephone number and carrier and type out a short message that is then forwarded through web-to-SMS gateways. Many of these services are free of charge to both the sender and the recipient, though the sender may be required to view a number of commercial advertisements while composing the text message. In addition, these services may limit the length of the text message in order to append a short ad on the recipient's phone. Finally, these services are often not configured to send a "reply to" number along with the message, so recipients may be unable to reply to the text message unless the sender includes specific reply information in the message body.