Have you ever needed to send an urgent text message, but there was just no service? Or do you often enjoy texting from your iPod Touch or iPad? I spent the last few days in an area with no coverage from my carrier, so I got an opportunity to try out an app that didn’t require a carrier plan to send text messages. But is it worth the money? 

I should start by saying that there are actually three different apps here – TextPlus Free, TextPlus Silver, and TextPlus Gold. TextPlus Free offers unlimited free text messaging, as promised. However – it insists on adding the line “Sent from TextPlus Free!” to the bottom of everything you send, not to mention ads everywhere. So that gets a little annoying. TextPlus Silver – which costs $.99 removes the forced signature, and adds group messaging. However, there are still advertisements everywhere. TextPlus Gold, ringing in at a whopping $2.99, removes said advertisements. Personally, I picked TextPlus Silver.

When you open up the app, it prompts you to sign in or create an account. Unlike many other apps, this isn’t just a trick to get your email address – it gives you the ability to access your messages and send messages from the same number on any other iDevice you own. You can easily start a conversation on your iPhone, then pick it up on your iPad or iPod Touch. Apart from this little feature, it behaves a lot like the standard messaging app. The only other features it brings are group texting and the ability to send text messages over WiFi – something those of you AT&T users might appreciate.

But now, we move onto the negative side. And unfortunately, this app has a lot of negative sides. It runs painfully slowly and with incredible lag, and crashes frequently. It often doesn’t receive and send messages properly – the people on the other end often say they don’t get your messages. For a text messaging app – this one seems pretty important. It’s riddled with ads which are hard not to accidentally click – honestly, it just seems like poor programming.

Overall? I would recommend this app to no one. It’s just too unstable and laggy. Especially for the price of $.99 or even $2.99. Even the free version is something I would tell you to pass up. However, I do realize that there is a huge demand for an app that allows you to send free text messages – and to those of you I would instead recommend you try out TextFree, which is