There are other benefits, too – many messaging apps will let you know when someone has read your message and indicate if the person is replying.
Often you can start a conversation on one device, such as a smartphone, and continue on another – for example, a tablet.
When you are travelling they are useful because you can use a wi-fi connection and not be charged for the text. They often also have stickers – cartoon pictures – you can send to people and options to send audio and video as well.
There are a huge number of apps available. One of the best-known messaging apps worldwide is WhatsApp, which has 900 million active users.
Like Viber, another popular app with 250m active users, the main benefit is that it can be used across platforms such as iOS (Apple), Android and Blackberry devices.
That means if you have an iPhone and a friend has a Samsung Galaxy, you can message each other as long as you both have the app. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014.
WeChat has 650m active users and LINE has 200m active users. They are most popular in China and Japan respectively.
Social media messaging apps
Social media companies have well and truly climbed aboard the messaging bandwagon. All are cross-platform capable but require a user to have an account with them, as well as the person receiving the message.
- Facebook Messenger has about 700m active users and the app or messaging function can be used on Facebook in your browser. You can also start a conversation on one device and pick-up on another.
- Google has its Hangouts app, which came from its Google+ social network. It does not release user figures so it is hard to know how many active users it has.
- Twitter also has its direct message service as part of its offering and there are 300m active Twitter users.
- LinkedIn, which has about 100m active users, also has a messaging service.
Specific platform apps
Then there are apps that only run on one platform.
- iMessage comes with Apple devices only. However, it does allow you to send a text from iMessage to anyone with a non-Apple phone – it’s just that it sends as a regular text message so it uses the cellular network and your carrier will charge you for it as a text message.
- Android also has Android-only offerings including ChompSMS and Textra.
Other messaging options
Skype and Snapchat also can be used for messaging – these companies have 300m and 100m active users respectively.
Just remember that with Snapchat your message disappears soon after it’s opened so it’s not the option if you want to be able to refer back to your messages.