160by2 and Way2SMS are the most preferred free online SMS providers in India. These websites will allow you to send free SMS through their website. You need to register on their site using your mobile number. Password will be sent to the mobile to confirm that you are the actual owner of the mobile. Once you confirm it, you are done. Now, you can send SMS to your friends and family members for free.

How they offer free SMS?
Normal SMS length would be 160 characters, but when you send SMS through these sites, you will only have 145 characters. The rest of characters are used to embed an ad, which in turn makes money for these sites and you can enjoy free SMS service. In fact, 160by2’s name has come from that idea. A 160-character SMS shared by 2, you and advertiser, where advertiser is paying for the message making it free.

What is the benefit using these sites?
These services are available as a mobile application too. These days, mobile internet has become cheap and available at around 100-150 per month. The speed will be somewhat slow to browse the sites, but okay for mobile applications to interact. Using it you can send free SMS to your mobile buddies reducing your SMS costs (if you are not using special SMS top-ups, you have to shell out around 1 rupee per SMS).

All mobile providers charge one rupee per SMS on festivals, New Year, Friendship Day, and some other special days. So, on these days you can use these providers to send the SMS for free.

Way2SMS has gone ahead in special features and now users can check mails from Yahoo and Gmail and also chat right from the Wat2SMS account.

They offers address book facility and grouping feature where you can main the phone book just like you do in your mobile phone, which is really a nice feature. In Way2SMS, you an download entire address book in Excel or CSV format onto your desktop. 160by2 also allows users to send SMS to not only India, but also to Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Singapore, Philippines & Malaysia.