How to Send a Free SMS from Gmail

Gmail allows you to send text messages (SMS) to mobile phones using the Google Chat feature from your Gmail account. Text messages can be sent to any mobile phone that originates in any country that supports Gmail and Google Chat.

Follow these instructions to learn how to send and reply to SMS using your Gmail account:

Prerequisites:

Sometimes there could be some errors, here is how to tackle them:

1. Chat Box is not showing

To solve this you have to enable the chat. Click on settings, go to the chat tab and click the chat on button. Save changes. (As shown below)

2. SMS feature is not enable

To solve this click on settings go to labs tab and enable "SMS (text messaging) in Chat." Save changes. (As shown below)

Now, if you have gone through both the steps then follow the below steps to send a SMS.

How it works:

Step 1. To use this feature, enter the contact’s name in the ‘search, chat or sms’ box and select ‘send SMS’ from the options that appear to the right of your contact’s name.

Step 2. In the dialog box, enter a phone number in the ‘send SMS messages to this number’ field & Save.

Step 3. Once the number is saved, a chat window will appear and you can type and send messages just like you do in a regular chat.

You are done!!

An SMS will be sent to the number that will read like this – "xyz@gmail.com (Gmail id of the person sending the message) initiated a chat with you. You may reply to this message like a regular SMS or send HELP for more info."

The person receiving the SMS can reply to the message as he/she would to any other text message, and the reply will appear as a Chat message in your Gmail account. While Google does not charge for using this service, a mobile provider’s standard charges will apply to any SMS message sent from a mobile device to Google Chat.

SMS credit in Chat:

By default, all users are granted a credit of fifty messages. Every time you send a message, your credit decreases by one. But every time you receive an SMS message in Chat (when a phone user replies to one of your messages), your credit increases by five, up to a maximum of 50. Also, if your SMS credit goes down to zero at any point, it will go up to one 24 hours later.

Interestingly, users can also buy additional credits. To do this, you can send an SMS to your phone and then reply to that message multiple times, thus increasing the credit limit by 5 for every message received in Chat. So basically, you will be buying more credits by paying your phone company for these outgoing messages.

Things to keep in mind:

• To prevent abuse, any Gmail user who sends an excessive number of SMSes from Gmail without getting any response in return, will be blocked from sending further SMSes.

• The text messages sent from Gmail Chat have their own number associated with the sender’s e-mail account.

• You can also block unwanted SMSes from individual senders by replying to the message with the word ‘BLOCK’. You can also unblock that particular sender later by sending ‘UNBLOCK’ to the same number.

• The conversations are stored in your chat history just like regular chats. But unlike Gmail Chat, you can’t go off the record while communicating via SMS.

• You can’t send SMSes to numbers that are registered with DND (which is quite a setback for the service right from the start).

• Google also mentions that the service can become tricky to use at times. Text messages can be a little flaky at times and occasionally encounter some delays before reaching their recipients. If you see a message telling you that "Something went wrong", it could indicate that your message is taking a while or that it might not go through at all.