Free International Texting Apps and Services

(Hat Tip to Mommy Points for the idea)

As long as you have WiFi from anywhere in the world, you will never have to pay for another international text message.  These services and apps will also work in the United States.

(Full Disclosure: I have an iPhone and everything below works on an iPhone 5S.  Some features may not work if you are using an older iPhone or a smartphone from a different company).

1 – Go to Settings (gear icon), and select Cellular.  By default, you should have all 3 of these options turned on when you are in your home country.

2 – Turn off all three options so all you see if white, not green, bars.

3 – Turn on Airplane Mode, see the little airplane icon in the upper left corner?

4 – Turn on WiFi and connect to a working network.

5 – If you are communicating with someone else that is also using an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, you can use iMessage.  All of these messages are sent over WiFi and will not be billed to your cellular carrier.

6 – Do you have friends without an iPhone, iPad, or iPod?  Not to worry, there are a few apps you can use to communicate with them.

7 – Since my brother has a Samsung Galaxy S4, he won’t be able to receive iMessage messages from me.  I use an app called TextPlus (download link) to send him messages.  The cool thing about this app is that it creates a “fake” texting number.  I can send and receive texts from this number and the sender has no idea that I am using an app.  This is great since only you need this app (you both don’t need to install this app to text each other).

8 – You can also use WhatsApp and Skype to chat with your friends/family, but you both will need to have the apps installed on your smartphone (or on a computer for Skype).

9 – Last but not least, you can use Facebook Messages to contact your friends and family.  This requires you both to be using the same service, either on your smartphone or computer.

I’m sure there are other apps out there for texting, but I generally stick with iMessage for my iPhone friends, TextPlus for my brother (and non-iPhone friends), and Facebook for everything else.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.