textPlus Free Text + Calls is a utility that allows you to send and receive text, mms, and calls on your ios device. There is an iPod/iPhone and iPad version. You can buy minutes or “Earn” them.
Setup was fairly painless. Select a username, password and give them an email. You’re then assigned a phone number. You can now text, MMS and call people. You start with 10 minutes of talk time. You can earn minutes by either watching videos or completing offers. This model is similar to the freemium model found in most games such as Battlenations and Tradenations. Minutes are fairly cheap $1.00 for 40 minutes, $1.99 for 100 minutes, $9.99 for 550 minutes, or $20.00 for 1300 minutes. If you spend $3.99 you can even remove ads for a year. The site claims you can save up to $1100 a year on cell phone costs. The only problem is that you need to have access to wifi or some kind of data-plan in order to use this app.
Unfortunately there are some downsides to this app. The last update disabled the use of communities in the free version. Communities allowed you to group chat with other users that are interested in similar interests. This feature has been moved to the silver version according to a review left for the latest update. When receiving a MMS message from this app the user is directed to a webpage to view the the message which is in the form of a picture. Although this is the smart phone era some people still don’t have one and thus would be unable to receive the picture.
textPlus is a great program. It is well worth the download. If you have teenagers who you don’t want running wild with a smart phone or texting you can use this as an alternative. By using an iPod touch they can still communicate with their friends without a contract. This is also a great solution if you work somewhere with horrible service and you want to still be able to text or receive calls during the day.