Pretty good alternative to standard texts

Been searching for something else besides Skype to get away from insanely overpriced cellular SMS texts. (Skype seems to have gone downhill, particularly in syncing between devices, ever since Microsoft bought it). Of alternatives tried so far, GroupMe comes closest to providing full Skype-like functionality. That said, here is wishlist of suggestions for future improvements: 1) Provide an option so that GroupMe will NOT default to SMS if other means are not available. The main reason to use it, IMO, is to avoid the 100,000% markup the cellular carriers charge for text messages vs other data. 2) It would be nice to be able to edit & correct msgs sent but not yet received by the recipient. 3) Changeable fonts would also be nice. As would formatting options, bold, italic, underscore, etc. 4) My admittedly ancient generation 1 iPad doesn't seem to have the capability of sending pictures from the camera roll. But, overall, GroupMe seems to be a winner app. Will be rooting for it to succeed.

8 Aug, 2013