Q: Want to text instead of iMessage

Crmaxi wrote:

 

How can I get my iPhone 6 to send my text as an text (sms) instead of imessage?  I need the iMessage on to receive group text, so I cannot turn this off.  I really do not want to use up my data on imessages when I am only texting to an individual person.

If you are quick about it...really quick about it, because it takes almost no data to send an iMessage that doesn't include a photo or video so it goes through really fast...you can press the bubble you sent and choose to Send as Text Message. From my experience, with data speeds as fast as they are now, this is next to impossible to do.

So moving to the alternative, you can turn iMessage off and keep Group Messaging on under Settings>Messages. You will still be able to participate in Group Messages that contain no more than 10 people in it.

iMessage uses a very minute amount of data as text is very small in size. What uses the most data in iMessage is MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) essentially containing any images, gifs, or videos you may share. Whether you have iMessage enabled or not, these types of messages still use up data. The advantage of using iMessage is that they do not default to using your Cellular Data when you are connected to WiFi.

As your concern is with saving on data costs, I would recommend visiting this link and finding what apps are consuming the most cellular data on your iPhone.

About cellular data settings and usage on your iPhone and iPad - Apple Support