If you want something that's more of a Slack/Discord alternative, gajim is receiving a lot of attention and polish lately, with Dino and Beagle as simpler alternatives. Source: over 1 year ago

I used Pidgin back in the day of AIM and ICQ, but nowadays, for XMPP, there’s Dino and Gajim for desktop and Conversations.im for Android. As far as I know, OTR has been superseded or replaced by OMEMO in most clients. Source: over 1 year ago

Https://gajim.org/ is a pretty good one. Source: almost 2 years ago

You can get a number from jmp.chat and use an app like Gajim (available on Windows/Mac/Linux). Source: over 2 years ago

On the desktop I use the gajim XMPP client. On my phones I use Conversations and Blabber (the latter is a fork of Conversations), and all messages between clients are encrypted with OMEMO. Source: over 2 years ago

Send me a message if you have more questions but im using this website. https://textfree.us/ There are a few other ways to text as well this is the one ive just picked to use as I can text from my computer making it quite a bit easier to text on. Source: about 1 year ago

Yes 100% free. I use https://textfree.us/ there is another one I forgot the name but they will send you a sim card too its free texting and 100 minutes with no data for free. So if you got an old phone lying around you could use it for your contacting. Then use your local GIS county map to pull addresses. Then go to Fastpeoplesearch.com to look up the phone numbers. Source: about 1 year ago

A few years back I used textfree for some work needs. I can't recall what the sign up process needed so I can't say whether or not it would work outside of the country, but it may be an option for some people. As I recall it will assign you your own number for use, so you'll be able to avoid the "already used" issue. Source: about 1 year ago

If you have a need for privacy and security that you need a separate phone number now, than your current one you can use the textnow.com online website or it's phone app on Google Play or Apple Store. You can also get a free phone number that will work better with the text option of the NDVH using textfree.us. You can use a temporary email from 10minutemail.com to create a Text Free account, establish a phone... Source: over 1 year ago

1) If you’re staying 3 months in the US (which is the max amount of visa-free time most other developed countries get), get a phone plan with Mint Mobile for your time there. Their prices are super cheap and their service is great. Unfortunately though, their plans only come in 3-month, 6-month, or 12-month increments, no month-to-month options, so if you’re staying fewer than 3 months, use the Prepaid SIM Card... Source: over 1 year ago