Send Free SMS from Gmail

Low on phone balance? No worries!Google has extended its free SMS chat service to Indian users. The Gmail SMS feature is now accessible to Indian users along with 51 other countries in Asia, Africa and North America. Google had first made this feature available to its users in some African countries in 2011.

The service starts with 50 SMS credits for each user, every sent SMS costing one credit. Every reply received adds on 5 credits subject to the maximum level being 50 SMS at any given time. There is no official statement from Google on the launch of this service, however the service has gone live this evening in the chat windows of many users. 

How does it work?

1.  Enter your contact’s name in the ‘Search or invite friends’ box in Chat 
2. Select Send SMS from the box of options that appears to the right of your contact’s name. Or, if you already have a Chat window open for this contact, just click Options, and select Send SMS. 
3.  Click Save.(A Chat window appears. )
4.  Just type your message . 
5.  Hit Enter 

People who do not wish to receive SMSs sent from Gmail Chat can block future messages from the sender by replying to the message with the word 'BLOCK' and later if they wish to continue receiving messages they can reply to the message with 'UNBLOCK'.

If Gmail Chat SMS recipients in India do not wish to receive any messages on SMS from any Gmail user, they can stop the service from sending them messages by texting 'STOP' to +918082801060. To reactivate the service they can SMS 'START' to the same number.

To send an SMS from Gmail, on the Gmail Chat interface type the phone number you want to send an SMS to and click Send SMS and then add the recipient's name and country, then click Save. Then write in the message in the chat window and press Enter.

While sending SMS from Gmail Chat to phones is free, responding to Gmail SMSs from the phone may incur standard SMS charges.

The service currently supports eight cellular operators including Aircel, Idea, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata Indicom and some circles ofVodafone. BSNL, MTNLBSE 1.20 % and AirtelBSE 2.06 % are not supported yet. 

If no replies are received to any of the 50 SMSes sent and the credit balance come down to zero, Google says, "...it will increase back up to one 24 hours later. So, you won't ever be locked out of the system."