Reduce Your International and Roaming SMS Charges

International and roaming SMS rates are outrageous. Sending a short text message from abroad can costs you as much 60c / 50p. The good news is there are numerous services out there that can help you reduce your SMS costs. Some allow you to send free SMS but they attach ads to your messages. If you don't like that, there are a few ad-free paid services that will let you text at a fraction of the normal cost.

FishText is the cheapest of them all, with rates starting from 1p / 1.5¢ (e.g. for India and South Africa), 1.33p / 2¢ for texts sent to most European countries, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and 2p / 3¢ for the UK. Spain is more expensive, with 4p / 6¢ per text.
These rates are per single 160 character text message. Your texts can be up to 459 characters long and FishText will split them the same way cell phones do; your cost will also be respectively higher.
The recipient has no way of knowing that your message was sent from FishText. Text messages sent from FishText are indistinguishable from those sent from cell phones the normal way; they bear your cell phone number as the sender ID, and FishText doesn't attach ads or any other junk.

FishText comes in two versions - Web and mobile.

The mobile version requires a GPRS- and Java-enabled phone and has all you need - a contact list, balance check, top-up and current rates.

The Web version has pretty much the same features. You can synchronize the contact list between the Web app and mobile version by choosing the appropriate menu option, which is a nice feature, considering the average PC keyboard is more convenient to type on than the average cell phone keypad.

Moreover, you can text other FishText users for free, or get a virtual mobile number (only UK numbers available currently) for an additional cost for extra safety when making new friends. I have never tried these features though.
The service is very fast and reliable. Messages are usually delivered in under 2 seconds.

All you have to do is to go to the FishText website, sign up and register your mobile number (used for sender ID). It doesn't cost you a penny.

You can start texting from the Web at the ridiculously low rates straight away. They give you £0.20 (€0.30) of free credit upon registration, which is enough for 10 texts to UK numbers, so you can test FishText without topping up. By the way, the minimum top-up amount is £5 / €5.

To use FishText from your cell phone, simply click Download on their website and they'll send the application to your phone. It will be ready to use, without any further configuration or signing in.

FishText fees only depend on the recipient's country (and sometimes network). FishText doesn't know where you are. However, data charges while roaming are usually higher than in your home network and are not covered by data plans. Luckily, with FishText, the amount of data transferred is so low that it hardly matters. Typically it will take you several text messages to incur a penny in data charges, which practically means that your total texting costs will be the same abroad as in your home country. To find out the exact data charges per message, use this calculator.

Pros

• Send SMS texts to over 200 countries at the lowest rates around
• Two versions: Web and mobile (works on most GPRS- and Java-enabled handsets)
• Messages look like they're sent from your cell phone
• No ads or spam
• Fast, reliable and secure
• Top up via credit/debit card, PayPal, Google Checkout or SMS

Cons

• Contact book doesn't allow space characters in contact names
• In the mobile version, the length of the edited text is not shown
• No synchronization between phone's contact list and FishText's

That said, I'm very happy with FishText. It's not perfect, but it's better than any other similar service I've come accross.