How To Send Free SMS From Gmail

Now Google team is providing an option to send free SMS from your Gmail account. Today I just explored this feature. I don’t know the exact launch date of this feature but it is working perfectly.

Before you can send free SMS from your Gmail account you have to enable some settings regarding this.

1. Go to Settings tab in your Gmail account and click on Settings.
2. Go to Labs section here. This is the place where Gmail experimental stuff is kept.
3. Browse the Available Labs feature and enable SMS (text messaging) in Chat by The SMS Team titled as gmark. Now click on Enable option to activate the feature. This will allow you to send and receive text messages.
4. Go to the bottom of the page and click on Save changes and you are done.

Now observe that your Chat window is changed to Chat and SMS. Now your chat window is capable of chatting as well as sending text messages. Just type any number in the box and you will get an option like Send SMS. Type the content there and just hit enter to send it.

You can send maximum of 50 free messages per day. Of course we cannot expect more than this since it is a free service. At present Gmail supports the mobile operators Aircel, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo and Tata Indicom in India. Even though Google doesn’t mentioned BSNL in the list, BSNL users are also able to receive messages (I tried it). I think AirTel users can also receive messages from Gmail chat. Soon more operators are also going to join the list.

Remember sending SMS is totally free. But if the person who receives your SMS try to reply you, it will cost him/her Re.1/-. Because the receiver gets the SMS from a number as 56070000 in which your email id is mentioned along with your message. So replying to 560700xx is a premium service. But sending SMS from Gmail is absolutely free  .

What if I want to send more than 50 messages per day?
If free limit of 50 messages is over, then also you can send messages if the person on the other side tries to reply to your Gmail message. For every reply your SMS credit is increased by five. Of course you can always send an SMS to your own phone, and then reply to that message multiple times. Every time you send a reply message, your SMS credit will be increased. In simple words you are paying money for messages after the free credit limit via your mobile operator.

Start or Stop Receiving SMS from Google Chat

If you no longer wish to receive SMS messages from any Gmail user, you can text STOPto the system number of your carrier. When you text STOP you will receive a message confirmation and you will no longer receive SMS messages from any Gmail user. To reactivate the service text START to the system number (560700xx).

Hope you will use this free service soon. Are you facing any problem in enabling this service? Then comment here.

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