To send text from computer for personal use, pair your phone: Messages on a Mac with an iPhone, Phone Link on Windows, or Google Messages for web with an Android phone. For business, use a browser-based texting inbox on a registered business number, so the whole team works from one number, opt-outs are tracked, and carriers don't filter your traffic.
These options look alike on screen, but they work very differently underneath. The personal tools mirror your phone onto a bigger screen. Your phone still sends the text, from your personal number, on your consumer plan. A business inbox sends from a number that belongs to the business and is registered with the carriers, and the compliance work happens before each text goes out. Below we cover both, show the actual costs, and say where the free option is good enough.
Personal options: mirror your phone to your computer
All three of these are free beyond your phone plan, and all three depend on your phone being on and connected.
Messages for Mac (iPhone)
Sign in to the Messages app on your Mac with the same Apple ID as your iPhone. iMessages (blue bubbles) sync automatically. To send regular SMS to Android users (green bubbles), turn on Text Message Forwarding on your iPhone under Settings > Messages and choose your Mac. After that you can type to anyone from the Mac keyboard.
Phone Link (Windows)
Phone Link ships with Windows 10 and 11. With an Android phone it handles SMS, MMS and notifications well. iPhone support exists but is more limited, with weaker handling of group threads and media, and messages tend to show only while the phone is connected.
Google Messages for web (Android)
Open messages.google.com/web in any browser, scan the QR code with the Google Messages app on your phone, and your threads appear in the tab. It works on Mac, Windows, Linux and Chromebook.
For texting your family from your desk, any of these is fine and you don't need anything else.
Where phone mirroring breaks for a business
For a solo operator texting a few customers who reached out first, mirroring works. Problems start once the business grows past one person:
- The number is yours, not the company's. If an employee leaves, customer conversations leave with their phone.
- No shared inbox. Two people can't work the same thread without passing a phone around.
- No opt-out tracking. If a customer replies STOP, nothing stops a coworker from texting them next week.
- No quiet hours. A text typed at 11 PM goes out at 11 PM, in whatever time zone the customer is in.
- Consumer plans aren't built for business volume. Sending the same message to many people from a personal number can get it filtered.
| Option | Sends from | Team access | Opt-out handling | Works without your phone | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Messages for Mac | Your iPhone number | No | Manual | No | Free with phone plan |
| Phone Link | Your phone number | No | Manual | No | Free with phone plan |
| Google Messages for web | Your Android number | No | Manual | No | Free with phone plan |
| Business browser inbox (e.g. Ready) | A registered business number | Yes | Automatic | Yes | Per segment, plus registration |
How to send text from computer as a business
The business version runs on carrier registration called A2P 10DLC. Business texts sent from software over standard 10-digit numbers have to be registered to a brand and a campaign, and unregistered traffic gets carrier-filtered. Our 10DLC explainer covers the background. The setup steps look the same on most platforms. Here they are in Ready, which we make:
- Create an account and add a card. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it. The first 20 texts are free, and they're one-to-one sends (a campaign is paid from the first text).
- Buy a number. It's the number your customers will see and reply to.
- Send your free texts before you register. They end the moment a registration is paid for, so use them first to check the inbox works the way you expect.
- Register your brand and campaign in the app. Registration has no setup fee. You pay the first month, $25, when you submit. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. If you bought your number before registering, you send on Ready's shared registration at the same per-text rate while yours is in review. An account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers, and after that it has to register.
- Text from the browser. Replies land in the Inbox, where anyone on the team can pick up the thread.
If your sample messages get bounced during registration, the cause is usually wording rather than your business, and a rewrite fixes most of them.
What it costs, with the math
Ready's Standard rate is $0.0075 per segment, plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. Replies you receive are billed the same way as texts you send. Registration runs $25/mo and $2/mo per number, so $27/mo with one number. Our 10DLC cost breakdown itemizes every fee. Billing is prepaid credits through Stripe, and carrier fees show up as their own line.
Worked example (assumptions stated): a business handles 400 customer conversations a month. Each conversation averages 3 outbound texts and 2 replies, and every text fits in one segment.
- Segments: 400 × 5 = 2,000
- Rate: 2,000 × $0.0075 = $15
- Carrier fees: 2,000 × $0.0045
- Registration: $27/mo with one number
Segments are what you pay for
One SMS segment holds 160 standard characters. Longer messages split into 153-character segments. A single emoji switches the whole message to unicode, which cuts the limit to 70 characters (67 per segment when it splits). That makes a 140-character reminder with one emoji 3 segments instead of 1. Send it to 500 people and you go from $4 in rate to $11 in rate, plus carrier fees on 1,500 segments instead of 500. Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending, so those characters never change the count. Emoji still do.
If you want calling from the same screen, the Ready Dialer adds click-to-call from the dial pad in the dashboard at $0.025/min, with each started minute billed as a full minute. It's manual calling only. There's no auto dialing.
The compliance pieces a browser inbox should handle
This is the main reason to leave phone mirroring behind. You're still responsible for compliance as the sender, but good software takes care of the parts people forget:
- STOP handling. An inbound STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE is honored and the opt-out applies across every campaign, so no one on the team can text that contact again by accident.
- Quiet hours. Ready doesn't send outside permitted hours, based on the recipient's area. A text typed at 10 PM to someone who hasn't texted you in the last 24 hours is stopped rather than sent that night, so send it again in the morning. Campaigns are held and go out when the window opens.
- DNC and litigator scrubbing. Known TCPA-litigator and DNC numbers can be screened out before a send. On an account, scrubbing adds $0.003 per segment when switched on, and landline validation adds another $0.003 per segment. Both are off by default. The standalone TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub costs $0.005 per contact. With TCPA exposure running $500 to $1,500 per text, the scrub is cheap risk reduction. It doesn't make you lawsuit-proof.
- Consent attestation. Every bulk send and every API send that sets
consent_attestedrecords who sent it, to how many people, and when. This is not a per-contact consent record. The opt-in time, wording and page URL for each contact have to come from your own signup form or store, so keep them there.
The AI message writer and spam-filter check help draft texts and flag wording that carriers tend to block. On deliverability, the most common mistake is putting a link in the very first text, which we cover in why links in a first message get filtered.
iMessage from a computer: the blue line
Plenty of businesses want their texts to show up blue on iPhones. Ready's blue line sends as iMessage, with the business's name and photo, from the same browser inbox. It needs no 10DLC registration, so you can start texting as soon as the line is set up.
It costs $99 a month per line, plus 6 cents a segment for each text sent. Replies are also 6 cents a segment, and reactions are free. Each line can start up to 50 new conversations a day and send up to 2 texts to someone until they reply, with photos only after a reply. Texting people you already talk to is unlimited. Texts to Android phones go from your regular number at the regular price if you already had a number; if the blue line came with its green number, your account's texts bill at 6 cents a segment once you register. Campaigns and drip campaigns send from regular numbers, not the blue line. The full details are in the blue line docs.
If you're building software that texts for your customers
If you run a CRM or vertical SaaS product and your customers want to text from inside your app, the browser inbox is only half of what you need. Ready gives each of your customers a sub-account with its own numbers and its own 10DLC registration, and the same sending, opt-out and quiet-hours rules apply through one REST API. A single send is POST /v1/messages with to, body and consent_attested. The messages API docs and our SMS API integration guide walk through the rest.
To be fair about price: raw CPaaS APIs like Twilio (around $0.0083 a segment) and GoHighLevel's LeadConnector (around $0.0083 a message) cost less per segment than Ready Standard. What we offer instead is self-serve registration and the inbox, compliance stack and sub-accounts already built. If you're a GoHighLevel user, Ready installs natively as an LC Phone alternative with two-way sync. Here's what native sync preserves that a webhook loses.
The practical takeaway
If you text a handful of people from your own phone, use Messages for Mac, Phone Link or Google Messages for web, and stop there. Once texts are coming from a business, to customers, with more than one person answering, move to a registered business number in a browser inbox. You get a shared inbox, automatic opt-outs and quiet hours, and you stop getting filtered. The cost is the per-segment rate plus about $27/mo in registration for one number.
If you want to try it, sign up, send your 20 free one-to-one texts before you register, and check pricing against your own monthly volume.
FAQ
Can I text from my computer for free? For personal use, yes. Messages for Mac, Phone Link and Google Messages for web are free beyond your phone plan. On Ready, the first 20 one-to-one texts are free. A card on file is required, and after the free texts it's $0.0075 per segment plus the $0.0045 carrier fee.
Do I need 10DLC registration to text customers from a computer? If you send business texts from software over a standard number, yes. Unregistered traffic gets carrier-filtered. On Ready, an account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.
Can my whole team text from one business number? Not with phone mirroring. With a browser inbox, yes. Everyone works the same threads from the same number, and opt-outs apply to everyone.
Can I send iMessage from a Windows PC? For personal use, Phone Link supports iPhone with limits. For business, Ready's blue line sends iMessage from the browser at $99 a month per line plus 6 cents a segment, and it can start up to 50 new conversations a day.
Will texts sent from a computer get marked as spam? The computer doesn't matter. The number and the content do. A registered number, opted-in contacts, no link in the first text and no emoji you don't need all help your texts get delivered.