It took a little doing…this is not a normal topic I would post here, but the information seems so useful that I decided to go ahead. I’m not a cell phone user. In fact, I don’t really like them…if i’m at my desk or at home and my phone rings, i’ll answer it. If i’m at a movie, out to dinner or some other family outing, i don’t really want people to be able to call me. I know that i’m not the majority. Regardless, there are different technical notifications such as website service outages, etc that I would benefit greatly from getting a notification to my cell phone. For this reason, I purchased a Tracfone with 2 years of activation in advance so that I don’t pay monthly bills, no “use it or lose it” minutes, no reactivation fees, etc.
Some of you might say “I told you…” ut it turns out, the email gateway was not so straightforward…I simply wanted to send myself text messages using the ##########@messaging.tracefone.com or something similar.
You see, Tracfone outsources it network to other national providers. I don’t know the details and after some research, I found a complicated method to determine which provider and thereby which email gateway to use. After following the steps, i determined that that I was on Metro PCS. This was incorrect information. Evidently the database that was used was out of date or maybe never up to date in the first place. It just didn’t work…
But, by this time I had all the formats for the major providers and it occurred to me that there was an easier way. Ready…? Wait for it…
1) send an email to the following addresses:
3215551234@vmobl.com
3215551234@mmode.com
3215551234@tmomail.net
3215551234@myboostmobile.com
3215551234@messaging.sprintpcs.com
3215551234@messaging.nextel.com
3215551234@mymetropcs.com
3215551234@cingularme.com
3215551234@message.alltel.com
3215551234@questmp.com
Note: of course, the above telephone number is not a valid #
2) wait for a message on your Tracfone and when you receive it, send a reply. When you get the reply at the email address you sent the original message to…you know your provider and your email format!
Yes, I know…it seems obvious to me now, but it wasn’t at all obvious before I did it…I spent maybe 2 hours (15 minutes here, 10 minutes there) trying to figure this out on the assumption that it had to be there.
Hope this helps someone else! If it does, post a comment and let me know…thanks!
UPDATED: I just found a great site for saving money on your next Tracfone — This Tracfone Promo Codes site has every available deal along with other helpful how-to info like how to use bonus codes. Thought it might help some of you save a bit!
This worked like a charm – thanks for doing the research.
Yes, it works. Thanks! A couple notes: Cingular is now att.net. Also one old tracfone seems to be on verizon which is vtext.com
Sending a message from your tracfone to YOUR OWN EMAIL address at your computer readily identifies the carrier if you look at the “from” in the email. At least it did on mine on the couple I tried.
Allows you to get info from info services such as MSN mobile for pennies a day on your simple tracfone. Good deal! Thanks!
Thanks for the note: tracfone in AK is using CellularOne and the gateway is:
3215551234@mobile.celloneusa.com
# of course the number before the @ is not a real number.
Good call. I was writing a text message website and searched for a while until I found your blog post regarding the SMS issue with Tracfone not being central-homed.
THANK YOU!!!
The people at Tracfone customer service are complete idiots, who don’t understand English very well; they thought I wanted to ’send’ email from my phone. Of course their web designers never anticipated the need for this functionality.
I am an inveterate systems tweaker, don’t know why I never thought to try the major carriers myself!
It’s a strange universe, I dropped my full cell service from AT&T/Cingular…and yet they’re providing the local SMS gateway for Tracfone! Hehehe
You just saved me sooooo much wasted time (now if I could just get back the time I’ve already wasted). The simple genius of it. I knew that Tracfone piggybacked on existing networks, but it never occurred to me that you could actually use those network’s SMS servers as well.
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing the knowledge.
Thanks for sharing. This has saved me quite a bit of time. I can now run some of my scheduled scripts on my home machine and have the results sent to my tracfone. So far, I haven’t been charged anything to receive and only .3 units to send. Looks like my tracfone here in West TX is txt.att.net
This is great. My Motorola V170 in San Francisco is on cingular. It is free to receive, and only takes .3 minutes of credit to send.
Great work. After having spent a couple hours (also 10-15 minutes at a time) to figure my tracfone out, I find your site. Sigh. . . .
My tracfone (near Saginaw, Michigan) seems to respond to both the cingularme.com and txt.att.net domains both inbound and outbound. I didn’t see the txt.att.net domain in your list – you might want ot add it.
Also, here’s a link to a great wikipedia site that lists lots of SMS gateways as well as lots of other up-to-date info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways
Again, great work.
George
This is so cool. I can now send/receive email on my tracfone. Thank you so much for doing this research.
It worked for me thanks!
SWEEEEET… after some work finding my carrier using your idea, I got Tracfone working.
Sent email to phone, then reply from phone to webmail. Then used SMS email gateway and composed email on phone to both webmail & isp mail server.
Note cost me 0.3 units for each send AND receive.
My particular tracfone is now phone#@txt.att.net and its SMS email gateway is currently 111 with format : emailaddress (subject) message body.
THANKS SO MUCH
Bob
The Twin Cities Tracfones are running on Verizon’s system, so the @vtext.com is the functioning one here. Thanks for the info.
This worked great. Gainesville FL is: @txt.att.net
worked, now if i could just get the mms working i’d be in heaven.
Thanks for the help. Somehow my example (in the Olympia, WA area) got transformed to “##########@txt.att.net”, so that’s another possibility.
VERY helpful to know! Thanks again.
Nice one!!! Works like a charm!!!
FYI a 949 number (Southern Orange County) comes back for me as:
949#######@txt.att.net
Thanks for the tip!
I am seeking technical help on a problem with my tracefone. I recently got Phone ID and I found out that when I call my wife or other people their phone list me as AGO RROBERTO I bought this tracefone new at Wal Mart over a year ago. Why is the phone ID listing me as AGO ROBERTO? I want this corrected. If I called a friend or a relative and needed help they would not know this person. It is very IMPORTMANT THIS THIS BE CORRECT. MY WIFE AND I TALKED TO FIVE TECHNICAL HELP PERSONS YESTERDAY AND IT HAS NOT BEE4N CORRECTED
FRED ATCHLEY
Fred, I can’t help you with this. You will have to go through tech support at tracfone to get this corrected.
My advice…be persistent. If its important to you then don’t give up…each time you have to call back you have more ammo to help you get the problem fixed. The squeaky wheel and all that…
Good luck!
-bryanw
Thanks so much for taking the time to document your effort. This worked perfectly. Tracfone users take note!
I was wondering about this issue, so I sent an email to my computer from my Tracfone and then looked at the Message Option using Outlook, and it showed the email address of my cellphone in Spokane, which is your 10 digit cell number plus @mms.att.net
Example: 5091234567@mms.att.net
Then I just moved the message from my cell to my Outlook contacts file and now I can send back to it and it’s in my Address Book.
Seems this should work for anyone anywhere.
Thanks a lot for this! Just got a TracFone yesterday and was setting it up but had no idea who my provider would have been without this handy trick!
I have friends in Atlanta, GA & Miami, FL I’m trying to send mms or email to there tracfone. Can someone give me the correct #@?????.com format so I can send emails to there phones. Thanks
Thank you for your hard work. This certainly saved me as well as others plenty of time.
Thank you Brian.
John…read the article above and send your friends test messages until they receive them. Then have them tell you which one they received…of course, this means you should send different messages each time so they can tell the difference.
Good luck!
“Sending a message from your tracfone to YOUR OWN EMAIL address at your computer readily identifies the carrier if you look at the “from” in the email.”
This worked for me.
On my computer I was able to receive messages from
3015551212@txt.att.net (sms)
and
3015551212@mms.att.net (mms, with photos attached)
Then I tried replying to these messages from my computer. I attached a 640×480 photo to the email going to the mms address.
So far I have received the reply I sent from the computer to the txt.att.net (sms) address.
I have not received the reply I sent to the mms.att.net (mms) address.
I guess this means that I won’t be able to send photos to the tracfone from the computer.
I tried the trick and received a test message. I replied and didnt get an email. When I replied it showed the addy as 1010100001 and when I EXTRACT the address on Tracfone it shows the same.
Sparky…try this then…send yourself a different message to each email. Send vmobl to the vmobl.com address, tmommail to the tmommail.net address and so on. That way you know which one is yours…
Update:
I finally DID receive the mms email I sent to the phone from the computer, to this address:
3015551212@mms.att.net (mms, with photos attached)
It just took 46 *HOURS* to arrive (?!)
Now I have a new wallpaper.
I have the LG600g and have lost count of how many ways I’ve tried to send a message via text and MMS to my e-mail address. MMS always produces a “Communication Error”.
So far I’ve spent several hours talking to four different TracFone Techies. They’ve had me try just about every possible combination of the menus, all to no avail. Until today each call ended up with the Techie telling me they would resolve the problem in 24 hours. HA!!
Today Techie #4 consulted with her supervisor and now they tell me the LG600g cannot send to an e-mail address.
I feel like a real dummy but, after reading the posts here, it seems there is a way to do this.
Can anyone help this dummy?
Poor Sad Fred in New York State
Thanks. This works with my Net10 phone as well.
I just got a Motorola W376G from Tracfone and I can send pictures to it by using [phone number]@mms.mycingular.com
Awesome! Thank you for the research!
got a tracfone in Memphis tenn. need to find out who i send the email to . what sms do i use . what gateway do i use.
please let me know.
southernlivingent@gmail.com
I also live in michigan, and both the @txt.att.net and the @cingularme work for me.
If I wanted to send myself a ringtone that I created at myxer.com, would I use @mms.att.net?
Because when i do (the ringtone is a .mp3), I hit ‘recieve’, and when its done, it tells me that its ‘Reading’ and then tells me ‘Fail’.
Anyone know how to fix this, or if I should use a different address?
I honestly can’t stand the Tracfone ringtones, and dont like the ones in their store either.
Otherwise, thank you SO much for this article, I can at least send texts now =)
Hey Max,
The ringtone issue could be too much to handle on your tracfone. First, you have to make sure you phone can handle ringtones, second, you have to make sure that the ringtone is in one of the formats (codec, bitrate, etc) that your phone can handle and finally, it may simply be that the service is blocking attachments to your phone. You might try using USB or bluetooth or someother mechanism to copy the ringtone to your phone…
Let me know how it goes…i’m anxious to find out if it works.
Also, how can I forward ringtones that my friend sent me to my tracfone to my computer?
I can send emails from my tracfone to my computer using 111 and the email address (subject) text format
but how do I enter the 111 and my email address when only the ‘forward to’ box is shown?
Lastly, are .mp3 the best format for ringtones, or should i convert the .mp3 to another format?
Thank you in advance,
Max
Alright, I have the LG CG255, which supports ringtones. I know this because my friend has already sent me one that worked, and one that didnt. Thats why I wanted to know how to forward a MMS to my computer, so I can check what format the working one is.
I dont think my phone has bluetooth, and Im sure it doesnt have USB because it didnt come with a USB cable and I couldnt imagine where it would plug into the phone.
How do I find out what codec/bitrate it has to be in?
It also tells me its Polyphonic, so I think it should handle the ringtone I want to use.
Thanks for the super fast reply though!
TY TY Worked great!! Just FYI my husband and i just upgraded our tracfones to the motorola flip (cheap one was 20 bucks on sale from 30 at walmart – no camera). @cingularme.com worked for us.
I had to try 29 addresses before I found one that worked. Between these comments and the Wikipedia page – I had lots to try.
I’m in NE Oregon and @email.uscc.net was the one that worked.
This is wonderful – thank you so much!!!!!!
i live in south east kansas and text.at&t one worked for me thanks guys haven’t tryed mms yet.
please help i have motorola tracfone w376g i tried sending email to my phone using all the addresses but it did not work please help thank you
help i have a motorola w376g and i cant figure itout i tried all the addresses and didn,t work please help thank you
I just received my new LG600G. I have been with Tracfone for years but wanted a new phone. I had my old phone number transferred to this new phone. I have been unable to send pictures to friends phones with this phone. I keep getting a “communications error” message. I emailed customer service and their response was probably due to lack of memory and that I needed to delete messages and/or pictures. The phone is brand new and I have no messages or pictures. They gave me instructions on checking memory, which I did even though I knew it was not the problem. Any suggestions on fixing this because this was the main reason why I bought the new phone? Very agrivated because even though I got error messages they still deducted my units. Need to get this fixed ASAP. Thanks, Kathy
Need help with sending pictures from LG600G to other phones. I just bought this phone and emailed customer service about this issue. I keep getting “communications error” message. Their response was memory problem. I needed to delete messages and/or pictures. It’s a new phone. I don’t have any on there to take up memory. I’ve been with Tracfone for years and bought this phone to transfer my old phone number so I could have these cababilities. Please help. Kathy
This works great–
Orlando area works with
3015551212@txt.att.net (sms)
and
3015551212@mms.att.net (mms)
Thanks for your time!
I sent myself an email FROM my tracfone, when I got it the return address was #@mms.att.net So I sent myself a little jpeg 128×160 pixels to match my W370 screen TO my tracfone. I got the message and saved the attachment and set it to wallpaper, smooth. Thanks for the tip!
Glad it worked for you Joe!
Thank you for the information Denise!