January 31st, 2009 posted by alexander drewniak

During the course of last year, we received boat loads of feature and general service improvement suggestions from you, our wicked cool users. We read all your emails, Get Satisfaction threads, Tweets and Fan Page wall posts. From the bottom of our baby blue Rebtel hearts we would like to thank you for all the efforts you’ve made to help us take Rebtel to the next level. Together we will do great things in 2009 and we have some pretty spectacular stuff to come. Thank you.

Out of all the cool stuff you wanted to see on Rebtel.com, SMS messages to Rebtel friends was one that kept popping up time and time again. Even though we love talking to people (especially when the calls are cheap or free) we get what you’re saying. Sometimes an SMS message is a better man for the job than a lengthy phone call. Therefore we would like for you to meet the newest addition to the family of Rebtel services; our SMS Beta.

With the SMS Beta you can send cheap text messages straight from your address book to Rebtel friends as well as any other random person that you have a mobile phone number to (we don’t condone random SMS messaging). If you’re eager to give this a go but don’t really know where to start, I took the liberty of preparing a short visual guide.

First off, log in to your Rebtel account. Once you have that out of the way go to your Contact List. You will now have to take a pretty big decision, namely who you will grace with the pleasure of receiving an SMS from you :) Once you’ve made up your mind, click on their name.

Contact Box

After the Contact Box has expanded, you will see a brand new option at the bottom that says ‘SMS’ and the name of your friend. Click this option to open up a Lightbox with the SMS Dashboard.

SMS Box

In my particular case, you can see that I have chosen to send my SMS to my Best Friend In The World. He’s the best. The drop down menu that specifies who the SMS is going out to is already defined as I previously clicked on this name. If  you would change your mind you can use this menu to pick another recipient of your message. As you go along and start typing, you will see that the character, cost and SMS counters will start ticking. If you exceed the standard SMS limit of 160 characters your message will be divided up in to two sendouts instead of one.

When you’re done typing your message, simply press ‘Send’. That’s all there is to it! Please note that you are not able to send SMS messages via Rebtel to friends and family in the U.S. This problem is naturally something that we’re working hard on to amend so plese bear with us. Lastly, since this is a Beta and all, we still have some kinks left in the chain to straighten out. If you stumble upon any funny bugs that are giving you a hard time, please do send an email our way.

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