It is hard to estimate just how popular texting has become as a means of staying in touch. Since the first mobile phones to offer this facility came onto the market, texting has become the most popular means of communication  and hit record figures a couple of years ago with an $81 billion market.

Nowadays, more people than ever are looking to send cheap international text messages and thanks to the advent of smartphone technology this is becoming ever more possible. Indeed, the average price to send an international SMS is around $0.11 per message though some of the top apps out there really give you a wide range of options and keep costs low. Here we’ll look at some of the contenders.

The contenders

To see who offers the best deal, we can only compare like-for-like products. So to test the water, let’s compare some of the market leaders and their prices for sending an SMS to India (remember it doesn’t matter where you are texting from as these services are internet based).

The cost of sending an international SMS to India : The comparison

Provider	International SMS rate	SMS texts per £10 spend
txt the World	4.50p per text ($0.07 per text)	222
txt4everywhere	4.50p per text ($0.07 per text)	222
First 4 SMS	6.50p per text ($0.10 per text)	153
Kapow	8.50p per text ($0.13 per text)	117
Bulk SMS	5.00p per text ($0.08 per text)	200

Rebtel leads the way here, but let’s take another example below to broaden our scope, this time comparing prices of a text message sent to Ethiopia in GBP sterling.

The cost of sending an international SMS to Ethiopia: The comparison

Provider	International SMS rate	SMS texts per £10 spend
txt the World	6.00p per text	166
txt4everywhere	4.50p per text	222
First 4 SMS	6.50p per text ($0.10 per text)	153
Kapow	8.50p per text ($0.13 per text)	117
Bulk SMS	5.00p per text ($0.08 per text)	200

When texting India, you receive almost twice as many and the pattern is repeated for countless other locations.

The conclusion

Continuous advances in communications technology have enabled us to send and receive digital images, audio messages, stream videos, and much more at a speed and volume that was unthinkable at the turn of the century. Despite the range of options available to us, statistics show that the written word (i.e. SMS/texts/chat) remains the modern user’s preferred method of communication and this doesn’t look like changing.  So make sure you do your homework and make the right choices to keep your international texting costs down!