Free SMS from Gmail to Safaricom

Staying in touch with your girls is important

Did you know that you can now send free SMS to your friends on Safaricom directly from your Gmail account? Try Gmail SMS and start texting your friends from your computer.

You can send SMS messages to your contacts’ mobile phones using Gmail Chat. If your contact replies, the text message response will appear as a reply in Chat. These conversations are stored in your Chat history just like regular chats.

Sending and receiving a message from Gmail to any phone is free. When replying with an SMS from phone to Gmail, you will be charged a regular SMS rate by your mobile provider. Gmail SMS is currently available in Kenya with Safaricom.

Here's how to use Gmail SMS:

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1. Log into your Gmail account. In the Send SMS box above Chat, enter the phone number you want to send a SMS to.
2. In the dialog box, enter Contact name of the SMS recipient and check that country and phone number are correct. Then, click Save.
3. Type your message in the chat window and hit Enter.
4. Your message will be sent to the phone number you entered.

Try it out! It seems to work fine.

SMALL UPDATE: In some cases, e.g. when you are logging in to your Gmail account from abroad, the Gmail SMS feature is not automatically activated (and you can't see the Send SMS box in Gmail). Here's a solution. Try going to Google Labs, select Gmail Labs and enable "SMS in Chat gadget" and "Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat". That should do the trick, like it did for @kenyanpundit.
@marvintumbo also confirmed he received a Gmail SMS from a friend in Sweden. Unfortunately, the friend is a dude and not the blonde Swedish hottie I had hoped for.