Use Email To Send Text Messages To Cell Phones For Free

Many cell phone service providers have a useful feature set up that allows you to send a short, text-only email to a cell phone. However, you have to know a person’s cell phone service provider cell phone number in order to make use of this service. Free in most cases, this e-mail to SMS gateway can be utilized by sending an email to the-person’[email protected]. For example, say I know a person who’s cell phone service is provided by AT&T and his cell number is 1234567890. I could send them a text message by sending an email to [email protected]. Note that the cell phone number must include the area code.

This little-known service is quite useful if you don’t have your cell-phone with you and you want/need to text someone, if you like to send reminders to yourself, if you find it more comfortable to text with a keyboard, or if you can’t afford a texting service plan.

Here’s a comprehensive list of providers and their corresponding domain names:

Service Provider	Address To Send To ([email protected])
AT&T	@txt.att.net
Verizon Wireless	@vtext.com
T-Mobile	@tmomail.net
Sprint	@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Virgin Mobile	@vmobl.com
Alltel	@message.alltel.com
Boost Mobile	@myboostmobile.com
U.S. Cellular	@email.uscc.net

 

If, for some crazy reason, the provider that you want to send to isn’t on this list, then you will want to check out this massive list on Wikipedia.

Tips & Tricks!

• Be sure to keep your messages less than or equal to 160 characters or else your message will be cut short when received!
• Verizon provides a web portal for sending messages that can be found here
• Some providers allow you to send picture messages if you send to a special number (for Verizon it’s @vzwpix.com and for AT&T it’s @mms.att.net)