Anyone know of a free way to send a text from e-mail?

My station has frequent ticket giveaways where you text something to enter.

However they have their response set up, it gets blocked on my phone as "premium messaging" (guessing they may have a logo in the response.)

Anyone know of a tool that allows you to send a text from the web somehow?

I thought of Google Voice but it doesn't seem to have any such option.

Thanks . . .

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by BalloonBiker on March 23, 2011 at 10:49am

I use an app for my Iphone called Textie. When people respond, it sometimes shows up as Serge mentions below. You can also use Google Talk to send texts I think by putting + in front of the number.

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on March 23, 2011 at 11:30am

Get the google voice plugin for your browser and start a gmail account if you haven't already with the google voice sign-up. You get a free phone number you can use on your computer even for long-distance, can actually use it to forward to other phones (like your cell or home phone -all simultaneously). And you get free unlimited no-hassle texting at your computer from that number. You don't have to worry about compromising the anonymity of your friends to spammers like many of the "free" texting services that are out there online.

If you are using chrome it really integrates nicely into that browser, naturally...

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on March 23, 2011 at 3:06pm

I don't know if I did a decent job describing what I need . .

I was not looking to send a text to myself. The number I need to text to is a 5-digit number.

I have Google Voice and looked through everything I could find online (it's all laid out in Youtube videos) but could not find any evidence that you could use it to send texts directly rather than only have voice messages transcribed to text. I guess I'll look again . . . the browser I'd use for this is Chrome (portable) so I guess that's encouraging . . .

Permalink Reply by igz on March 23, 2011 at 3:11pm

what others described was for real phone numbers. that 5 digit shit...dunno if thatll work. typically, in the way serge describes, you need to know the carrier of the receiving number... att.net, tmomail.com, etc

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on March 23, 2011 at 3:15pm

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on March 23, 2011 at 3:20pm

I had already tried it on the guess that it could be at&t (xxxxx@txt.att.net) but just got a bounce.

iggi said:

what others described was for real phone numbers. that 5 digit shit...dunno if thatll work. typically, in the way serge describes, you need to know the carrier of the receiving number... att.net, tmomail.com, etc

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on March 23, 2011 at 4:33pm

Damn . . . so much to do before I crash-- needed to not get bogged down with this.

I dug out a gmail account I registered in 2006 and never used (great-- thousands of messages meant for a different person with the same name) and set it up with Voice.

I can send a text to a "normal" number, and it's great that the return number shows up as the Google Voice number and not my real one-- but apparently not to this 5 digit thing-- error: message not successfully delivered.

I think I'm running out of options . . . unless someone thinks they can figure out what the "real" number to text would be? It's WXRT-- 59393. They also give a phone number on the site:

TEXT: XRT (59393)

PHONE: 312.329.WXRT (9978)

but it's been disconnected.

Permalink Reply by Vondo on March 23, 2011 at 4:46pm

Don't most of those radio numbers start with 591 prefix? Maybe 591 -9393?

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on March 24, 2011 at 12:43am

From what I've found out those short numbers only work within a particular network. So if you are not on the exact same wireless carrier that the radio station (or whatever promotion) is using then you can't participate.

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on March 24, 2011 at 8:29am

Thanks, KMZ. I call the studio number from time to time-- doesn't seem likely that it would be connected to the text number. I've left a message with the promotions folks and also e-mailed with this question already. I think my best option might be lobbying them to remove whatever it is in the response that's being considered "premium messaging."

Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on March 24, 2011 at 10:47am

I've not heard of a free service that can send text messages to shortcodes. Most free SMS services online require that you know the cellphone provider of the recipient, or they have a background service that can determine the provider based on the cellphone number.

Shortcodes operate very differently. Anyone can buy one and there are different providers of shortcodes. Each shortcode provider must have its own agreement and relationship with each of the cellphone network providers.

By "premium messaging," do you mean that they try to send you an MMS (allows pictures, video, and audio attachments) and your phone/account is set up to block these? Most cellphone providers now charge the same amount for an MMS as an SMS (text only message) - you should look into this.

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on March 24, 2011 at 11:20am

Exactamente.

I don't know what about the response is being seen as "premium messaging" since I can't see it.

Would need to know what it is before going to my provider and asking if it incurs extra charges.

Steven Vance said:

By "premium messaging," do you mean that they try to send you an MMS (allows pictures, video, and audio attachments) and your phone/account is set up to block these? Most cellphone providers now charge the same amount for an MMS as an SMS (text only message) - you should look into this.