I've come across a number of websites purporting to empower you to send free text messages to mobile phones.
What is their business model? For example, do they spam the recipients with adverts?
Has anyone here used them? What did you think - good, bad or ugly?
Thanks, AJ
Not familiar with this concept, but anytime you see the word "free" for an internet app, you can just substitute "tons of ads coming your way".
I work in IT. It is possible to send text messages to cell phones via email.Corporate IT does this for internal communications all the time.
https://www.wikihow.com/Send-a-Text-from-Email
My first impression of the websites you reference is that they are some sort of scam.
Verizon used to have a spot on their website where Verizon cell phone users could send a text. IIRC, you had to pre-register and provide an email address as the sender. I don't think it is available anymore.
A friend of mine has WhatsApp on her (Windows 11) PC and also on her Android phone, both of them access the same account.
I've tried out two services. The first, long ago, limited the SMS size and appended a few words of ad (powered by xxx or similar) - the free service became unavailable at some time, maybe a year after I tried it. You were limited to one free msg per day, or could subscribe to get more, but it could be driven by cURL.. The other was much more recent, only about a couple of years ago, again limited free service and paid options for more; only tried one msg as it was not suitable for what I wanted (it was a web form with adsand bits to make it unsuitable for automation, if you didn't want to pay the subscription). I wanted something I could embed in a script to SMS me if my home network suffered a problem - but, mostly the problems I have are caused by VirginMedia borking the connection to the outside world, which would prevent the SMS getting out anyway.
Thank you.
I'm following DS's suggestion and will hopefully have time to give it a try later today. The internet reports the intended recipient's phone as being with Orange, but the recipient insists they're with EE. I'm hoping for Orange because feedback reports EE's gateway as unreliable.
ETA got a bounce from Orange so EE must have finally integrated their customers. The EE e-mail-to-text didn't bounce but I haven't heard from the recipient.
AJ