Free SMS Word Count: 423 Summary: Free SMS is the ability to send text messages without a charge through the Internet. Many websites are offering the service for free as a link with email messaging. Keywords: Free SMS Article Body: What is Free SMS? Free SMS is the ability to send text messages without a charge through the Internet. Many websites are offering the service for free as a link with email messaging. It is not a new concept, and it is beginning to catch on with people looking to save money on text messaging. Text messages can get expensive to send through cellphones if paying per text message sent. Even text packages can run into the double digits per month adding a burden to consumers' cellphone bills. The text message is sent by way of the Internet. Features of Online Free SMS Many people think that free SMS means sending text only messages. This is not the case with free SMS. Audio files, graphics, and pictures can be sent with the text. Some websites will allow users to send the free SMS message to as many as ten people at one time. A fair amount of free SMS sites offer a widget or a tool to place on their website or personal MySpace page. The free SMS messages can be sent internationally to more than one hundred service providers. What is the Free SMS User Required to do? Usually most free SMS sites just require users to register and agree to the privacy policy of the website. Beware of any site that doesn't ask you to agree to a privacy policy. Some free SMS sites that launched without a privacy policy got into trouble. Also, users agree not to spam people through the free SMS sites. Popular Free SMS Services There are alot of Free SMS services on the Internet. Some of the most popular are: Gizmo SMS, Peekamo, Teleflip, and TxtDrop. Gizmo SMS can be used for recipients living in several different countries around the world. It is know for having great terms and privacy guarantees for its users. Peekamo utilizes a program that uses short message peer to peer which differs from the email-SMS type. The sponsor for Peekamo is Sharp. Presently, everything is offered in beta but the site is evolving. Teleflip offers users emails sent to an SMS inbox at no charge. The user is allotted up to 5,000 messages per month. TxtDrop has become very popular despite some of the negative publicity it first received. The owner of the website has learned from past mistakes and now offers: a viable privacy clause, blocking for email, limitations of the amount of messages that can be sent each minute, and phone numbers are encrypted within MySpace code for additional privacy.