Is there a way to text in canada to a us cell phone where there won’t be any costs incurred for both me and the other person in the us? I assume there is a program online where you can download to send a text to a us cell phone for free but if there is, then the receiver of the text still has to pay for it?
Note i want to send a message from my computer to a us cell phone.
AOL instant messenger (and its clones, like Trillian) can send SMS messages from your computer. I do it all the time.
I don’t know if it works outside of the USA though.
You can send an email to a cell phone number that will be delivered as an SMS text message. Problem is, you need to know their cell phone provider. This link appears to have a big list of carriers.
ETA: though I now see it’s very old. Try Googling “email text” or “email sms”
On the Canadian carrier Fido, you can still send a text message to a subscriber by sending an email message to <phone number>@fido.ca. (The phone number is without the preceding 1, or any punctuation or spaces; just a string of 10 digits starting with the area code.) I just tested this and it still works.
If you know the carrier your friend uses, there should be a similar service for reaching its subscribers.
ETA: the recipient may still pay for the text, depending on plan.
How about a reply? Can it be routed to come to your computer?
Well you can text to email. So the sender sends from user@gmail.com to 123456789@vtext.com and the person gets the text on their phone, and they reply and the reply goes to user@gmail.com.
Just tested and confirmed.
The other suggestions are good, but if you want a real phone number, you could use Textfree. The parent company of Textfree, Pinger, has a desktop web version on their website and you could also download the iPhone or Android app. It’ll set you up with a US-based phone number, but you’ll get a real phone number, if that’s important to you.