How To - Where Texting and Email Meet - Text someone using email!

There are times when it’s easier to use email than poke at a phone to text someone.  Possible reasons could be:

• You do not have a cell phone
• Your cell phone is broken
• You can type faster than you can text
• You cannot text at all
• Cell phone coverage at your location is poor

To deal with this, cell phone providers created email gateways that can be used to send a text to one of their customers.  You simply open your email application and use the cell phone number and the email gateway their provider supplies to form an email address.

There are two kinds of text messages:  SMS (Short Message Service:  text only) and MMS (Multimedia Message Service:  multiple people or graphics).  Each type of text message requires a different email gateway.  Some providers do not provide email gateways for both kinds of messages.
For example:

7773251010@mycellphoneprovider.com

Now, where to find each provider’s gateway?  It is not your provider’s gateway – it’s the gateway of your recipient’s provider.  Fortunately, people have compiled a list comprising many countries:   https://email2sms.info.  That site allows you to either subscribe for a one-time USD $3 fee and get perpetual updates (in Excel-compatible CSV, JSON, and PDF eBook formats), or you can download the CSV file directly from the site yourself using their handy “download it here” link.  Note that you will need to right-click the link and select “Save link as.”  Or, you can click the link and save it to your bookmarks for future reference (will only be available to you when you’re online, though).

For example, if your recipient uses AT&T as their provider, their SMS and MMS email gateways are @txt.att.net and @mms.att.net.  Some providers use the same email gateway for both.

Here is the best news:  people can respond to your text and you’ll get it in your email!  That means you can have a correspondence with them with your email.  Very handy!