Dear Lifehacker,
I just upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 5, and my spouse is going to be getting an iPhone 4S tomorrow. With this iMessage feature I keep hearing about—or even with one of the many SMS-replacements available on most devices—is it finally time for me to ditch my text messaging plan completely so I can save roughly $20 a month?
Sincerely,
Texting Is Overpriced
Dear TIO,
Good question! In fact, whether you're using iOS or not, you've got a lot of options for ditching your SMS plan and using third-party alternatives for free. But they all come with a catch.
As with all questions that involve other people as much as it does yourself, the short answer is "it depends." While you've already won a good chunk of the battle, since you and your spouse are both going to be on iMessage, you've also got to consider your friends? Will they be as quick to upgrade to iOS 5 as you? Do they even own an iPhone?
I'm going to go over your options, starting with iMessage, since it's built into your OS and is the most transparent. There are also third-party apps that can replace traditional texting, but they require both people to be using the same app. But there's one final option, Google Voice, that requires very little work from other people, but a lot more of a commitment from you.
iMessage: When you and everyone you know have iPhones
iMessage isn't an additional app on your phone (in case you were looking around), it's just a way for you to send messages to another iOS 5 user through the data network, using the default Messages app. It looks exactly the same as a regular text message, except the chat bubble is blue, and you can see if your message was delivered. It's very much the equivalent of BlackBerry Messenger for iOS users (and only iOS users). You can tell if someone is iMessage-capable if, when you text them, the grey text in the text input field changes from "Text Message" to "iMessage".
In your case, I'm going to make the assumption that texts to your spouse make up about half of your overall monthly SMS usage. This could be way off, since I pulled this number out of my 30-pin dock connector, but assuming it's right, this would bring your usage down considerably. It might even be enough to let you lower your texting plan from something like 1000 texts a month to 500, or down from unlimited to 1000.
Is this enough for you to eliminate your texting plan entirely? That depends on your friends. If they've already got an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or are planning on the iPhone 4S, your job should be pretty easy—get them to upgrade to iOS 5! If they're not as tech-savvy as you, either head over and upgrade it for them, or send them a quick beginner's guide on how to upgrade.
But you probably have friends who are on Android, BlackBerry or even dumbphones. There's nothing you can do there. You (probably) don't have the money to buy them all iOS devices, and if you did, you wouldn't be worried about saving a few bucks a month by lowering your texting plan. For these people, you should either have a lower-tier texting plan, or if you don't communicate with them often, kill your plan entirely and just pay the flat-rate $0.20 or so per message. As long as the ultimate cost doesn't go over what you would have paid for the lowest-tier plan, you've come out ahead.
Luckily enough, the iPhone has an App Store, and there are apps inside that can bridge the gap between iOS users and everyone else.
PingChat, kik, Beluga, Google Messenger, and other data-network SMS replacements
If you've still got a bunch of friends on non iOS 5 phones, there still are data-only alternatives to using SMS. If they're on Android, you can both install Google+ and send each other Google Messenger messages. This is probably the easiest method for Android users, since they probably already have G+ installed.
There are other text-replacement apps like kik and PingChat that are cross-platform between iOS, Android, and even BlackBerry. You'll be able to talk with people with older iPhones as well, since the apps don't need iOS 5. There are two hurdles, however. One, you're going to have to make people install these apps, which might be a hassle, depending on the person. Two, you'll have your messages spread out over the Messaging app, kik, Google Messenger and who knows what else. That can be a pain, because you have to remember which friend was using which app in order to communicate properly.
If that's too much hassle for you, there's one ultimate, nuclear solution that will take care of everything.
Switching to Google Voice
Google Voice is a wrapper for your phone number, essentially hiding your real number behind a Google Voice number. When used properly, all your calls and texts will be piped through the system, so nobody will know what your real number is. This gives you benefits like voicemail transcription, ringing multiple phones at once, call blocking and caller screening, but the most important feature (for this post) is that you get free, unlimited texts.
The default behavior is that all texts sent to your Google Voice number will be forwarded to your real number, but that uses up your real text messages. If you want to use no text messages at all, turn off this feature and install the Google Voice app, using that to do all your texting. No texts will hit your Messages app, but you'll still be able to get all your texts using the GV app and push notifications. Occasionally these push notifications these will be delayed a bit, either due to slowness on Google's side or slowness with the push server, but they should all eventually get there. You can also just manually refresh the texts in the GV app if you're in the middle of an active conversation, to make sure you're not missing anything.
And if you don't want people to have to remember a new number, you can port your old number to Google Voice for a one-time $20 fee. However, this brings up some weirdness with iMessage. Because you've now ported your old number to Google Voice, you need a new real number to act as the number for your phone. For example, if your old number was 212-555-1234, and you've now ported that to GV, your phone provider will assign you a new number, such as 212-555-8888, because every phone needs a real number (unless you're on Sprint and have an Android phone, but that's outside the scope of this post). You still, ultimately, have two numbers. Unfortunately, iMessage works based on your real phone number, so you're going to have to give people you want to iMessage that 212-555-8888 number for them to contact you. But, you can just always rely on Google Voice instead and let them worry about texting fees (jerk).
One huge downside to Google Voice is that it can't do MMS, so people will be sending you photos and expecting you to reply, but you won't even get an error message telling you that the photo was sent. It's a major oversight on Google's part, and one that might be a dealbreaker for you if you MMS a lot. But, you do get the ability to send and receive texts on any web browser logged into the Google Voice website, which is also a big plus.
So? Can I ditch my text messaging plan or what?
The long answer is yes. If you're willing to go through all this work—getting people you know to update to iOS 5, convincing others to install and use alternative messaging apps, or just making the switch to Google Voice entirely, you can. Not everyone is willing to do this, especially if you're only saving five to ten dollars a month. But, if you can go from a $20 messaging plan to a $0 messaging plan, you'll be saving $240 over the course of your contract, which pretty much pays for a new iPhone by itself. That's pretty tempting.
Love,
Lifehacker
P.S. If you've ditched your SMS plan for a free alternative, let's hear what method you chose in the comments.
Title image remixed from an original by gosphotodesign .
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