Staying in touch with loved ones when you arrive at your destination gives a great peace of mind. International texting (SMS) can be quite pricey. Here’s a list of messenger apps for your mobile that will let you communicate with folks back home. What I especially like about these apps is that you don’t even need to have working cell service to use them… they’ll work over WiFi!
Pretty much all of these have the same features (text messaging, send photos/images/video, voice/video calls, etc.) with a few caveats here and there. Personally, I have all of them on my phone and PC with the exception of Facebook’s Messenger… mostly because I hate Facebook.
You can find all of these apps in the Google Play or Apple App Stores.
The Messengers
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, much to my chagrin. That being said, it’s still highly secure*. WhatsApp is the main messaging app I use (more than SMS aka regular texting) and I find that most of the rest of the world tends to use it. It identifies people based on their phone numbers and acts kind of like a ‘layer on your phone number’ for lack of better explanation.
Most folks in the Americas use this.
https://www.whatsapp.com/
Line is primarily used in Japan, though also in Thailand, Indonesia, Spain and Chile. Even though I favor WhatsApp, this is what my family and English students that live in Japan primarily use.
https://line.me/en/
Viber is pretty decent and has several features that you’ll see in the other apps on this post. I used this a ton when I spent a month in Vietnam… most of the folks there use this as their primary messenger. I also have some friends in Japan that use Viber instead of Line. A great feature Viber has is you can create a phone for number just anywhere in the world!
https://www.viber.com/en/
Signal is a messenger built around security and privacy. It doesn’t have most of the other features that we enjoy from the other apps, but if you absolutely, positively, need to keep your communications secure, this is for you.
https://www.signal.org/
There are a few more that are available, but I don’t use them for reasons of privacy and/or security. You can debate these points really with any of the apps listed, of course, but some that I have purposely omitted use the data in what I personally consider a malicious fashion and I won’t educate about or use them.
Queue Your Messages
I will frequently use the time I’m on the plane to queue tons of messages I’ve been meaning to send. As soon as you get an internet connection, they’ll all send out to your friends and family.
I will especially take photos and record video and let it sit in the messenger’s “outbox” of sorts and send out when I get online.
Access from Your Computer
Each of these apps have a Windows and sometimes a Mac app that you can install on your desktop/laptop and answer without touching your phone. Honestly, I leave my phone on a charger at the front door and maybe use it twice a week because my first four apps I start each morning are these messaging apps.
*Using WhatsApp, Facebook can technically only see what phone number you’re texting, how frequently, and the total size of the message (in terms of megabytes). That’s it. They can’t read your message like they can with their Messenger app.