Vodacom4me and MyMTN allow you to send free SMSs from a computer. Unfortunately those sites are not accessible from a cellphone. I came across a site which provides a mobile interface for Vodacom4me and MyMTN¹. This means that you can send SMSs from your cellphone for the cost of the GPRS/UMTS data required to access the site. I having been using this for quite a while, and it works fairly well.

However, there are a few aspects of the site which I don't like, and so I wrote my own version which performs the same function with the following extra features:

1. Uses cookies to store login data instead of a URL with parameters which needs to be bookmarked (although it will fall back to this method if the user agent doesn't support cookies).
2. Submits forms using POST instead of GET (but will fall back to GET if the user agent doesn't support POST).
3. Allows multiple recipients (although only Vodacom4me supports this).
4. Specifies the maximum message length in the textarea so that phones which support it can show how many characters are left.²
5. Automatically logs into Vodacom4me/MyMTN again if session has expired.³
6. Cleaner, less cluttered interface (mainly optimised for my phone ;-) ).
7. Accessible over HTTPS for extra security.

The site is available at http://m.mene.za.net/ (or with HTTPS). Obviously the restrictions enforced by Vodacom4me and MyMTN still apply. Vodacom4me allows 20 SMSs per day to Vodacom numbers for Vodacom subscribers only. MyMTN allows 5 SMSs per day to MTN numbers for anyone. The source code is available for anyone who is interested (and brave enough).