The charges for texting are ridiculous. I wish they could just route the texts through the data plan instead so you wouldn't have to pay extra...but of course that's easy money for the carriers that they'd lose out on...
The cool thing about WhatsApp is that it tells you which of your contacts already have it - only 2 people in my case, but better than none!
Um, that's like saying you wish your water bill and your electricity bill were the same thing and that utilities companies are scamming you because, hey, why don't they just send electricity on down the water pipes? SMS works completely different from MMS, which uses your data services (EDGE, 3G, HSPA+, WiMax, LTE, etc.). The carriers
could start sending SMS and voice down data pipelines, but that would cause our already congested data speeds to get even slower. You're charged separately, because you're using two totally different aspects of the network; two totally different aspects of the network are used, because it keeps data speeds and voice networks from getting congested; congestion is when your phone doesn't do what you want and you QQ rage at your carrier for sucking.
As per the OP, have you tried GroupMe? I used to use TextPlus with my friends and fam and we switched to GroupMe. Also, cute tiel!!! I wish I could get mine to stop singing the GW2 battle music >.<