I have a 4S iphone. When is text messaging free?

[Omashark]

Most of my texts are to and from iphones.  Why am I being charged for them?  What is the difference between sending a message to a phone versus an e-mail address?

[rcschnoor · Accepted solution]

If an iPhone does not have iMessage activated, then your text to that iPhone would be sent via text and not via your data allowance and would be charged a fee if you do not have a texting allowance. Regardless, you are still paying for it unless you are on wifi, you are simply using your data allowance instead of your texting allowance.

As to your question of when is text messaging free? SMS messages aren't really ever free. 1)You either have it included in your plan and therefore pay for it in your plan fees, 2)you have an SMS allowance and pay for it that way, 3)you pay on a per SMS basis.

There ARE other ways to send messages which CAN be free, but not always. You can sign up for a messaging service which gets sent via data, but unless you are on wifi, then you would be paying for these thru your data plan. In that case it is not "free" because you are paying for the data.

[ttipgem]

Are the "messages" turning to blue when you send them?  Or are they green?

Blue means iMessage is being used and they would count as data.

Green means iMessage is NOT being used and they would count as text messages.

[Tidbits]

To add if you try a group message it has to be either all iMessages or all text. They don't mingle. If one person is using SMS then all recipients will be SMS back and forth.