Sending SMSs has become an expensive affair nowadays, especially if you are roaming outside your local area. If you are not in India and have to make an SMS to India, the charges of each SMS could be astronomical. It would depend on the service you are using, but still it will be enough to burn a hole in your pocket. At such a time, won't you be very happy to know that there actually are possibilities to send free SMS to India?

There are various websites that allow you to send free SMS to India. These websites are doing it mainly because it gives them a chance to advertise themselves through the SMS. Each free SMS that arrives from their services will mention a link to their own or an affiliate's website. The intention will be to make the reader of the free SMS to visit the website mentioned and become a member there. A normal SMS is of 160 characters. However, a free SMS provided by these services will provide you a limit of about 140 characters, keeping the rest 20 for their own advertisement. You may count this as a limitation of the service, but think of the larger picture ? you are getting a wonderful chance to send a free SMS to India!

That is a great big incentive, no doubt about it. You are saving on the costs immensely. So what do you have to do then? You have to only find out such websites and register on them. The registration is a simple process in itself. You have to fill in your name, your location (within India or outside), a valid email address and your mobile phone number. This phone number gets registered on the site and you cannot normally make another account with this number. Once you click on the submit button, a password is sent to the mobile number. You have to use this password to log in on the website and that's it ? you are ready to send your free SMS to India.

The method of sending the free SMS is through the website itself. You have to type the mobile number where you want to send the free SMS, type the text (remember that you will not get to use all the 160 characters of a routine SMS) and verify that you are not an automatic machine by typing in an identification code (Turing's number). You then click on the submit button. The website will first check the connectivity with the mobile service. This usually takes less than thirty seconds. Once the connectivity is established, a send button becomes active and you get to send the free SMS.

One limitation of this method is that the name of the person does not usually get displayed. However, your mobile number will be displayed with the SMS so that the receiver knows which number the free SMS is coming from, but not the name of the person. Some websites allow this to be customized where you can get your name displayed with the SMS. It is good to search a little on the Internet to find a good website that provides free SMS to India. Since the service is free, a bit of browsing and checking various services would not be a problem, especially since you would be paying a lot of money otherwise.