How do I send a sms on my Google Nexus5 cell phone?

download it through google play store

One way to do this is open a google account (free) and sign up for Google Voice and get a Google phone number which you can use for free phone calls in USA. Then give out the Google phone number instead of yours. You can set the Google phone number to do a lot of things, including forward to any number you want to. Your phone, a friend you are visiting (or place), or a voice mail or translate to text and text you. Lots more. But that answers your question.

PS, Use Google Hangout and Hangouts Dialer to do the free calls.

Hangouts is Googles version of Instant Messenger or online chatting software. Google has enabled a feature that allows text messages to be routed through Hangouts so you can use the Hangouts app as your text messaging app. If you do not use Hangouts on a regular basis, there is no need to do this.

This feature is very useful for people who use Google Hangouts and wanted to integrate their text messages and hangout chats into one app.

If you need further help, I’m available over the phone at https://www.6ya.com/expert/thomas_e8f475a8655f7b4a

Hangout is a native app from Android, it can not be remove, this is if you are using the latest Android OS.

But there is a way around, I guess you want to use another messaging app as your default sms. The first thing that you can do is to disable Hangout. You can achieve this by going to setting, apps, search for Hangout and tap it, now tap disable.

Now, I'm not sure how to enable default for a third party app, in this case a messaging app, but you can always open the new app and maybe it could prompt you to set it as default. For the sound or ringtone, there are 2 ways to do it.
1. Open the messaging app and tap the menu, from here you can set the ringtone for your sms.
2. Download and install Zedge from the PlayStore, download the ringtones that you like the most, after downloading them, the one that you want to set it as your sms ringtone, just tap set at the bottom, and choose messages or sms.

Hello Marcy,

That might be a problem with the application you are using. We always recommend to use Hangouts as default messaging application.

Emilio
Motorola Support

TIP Android 4.4.4 messaging text SMS texting Solution I have two options SKYPE and MIGHTYTEXT I only just realise that the SMS option was available on my Google Nexus 7 Tablet its there like on my computer option to chat free or send TXT SMS and its so much cheaper using SKYPE I have both on my devices but i realising SKYPE SMS TXTING messaging is best solution & my life is TEXTING .. U should know Messaging is disabled on 4.4.4 and the alternative HANGOUT is not wat i want

state your phone model plus brand.

Invitations? or SMS/Text to mobile phone? If it's the latter,I doubt you could do that. I know with google voice, you could do that but not with hangouts
https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/3441321?hl=en

Hi!
Dialing *#*#4636#*#* AKA *#*#INFO#*#* brings up a troubleshooting/statistics menu page. Dial that and select Phone information and at the bottom you can enter the SMSC (Short Mail Service Center) number. If the phone can receive but not send SMS it could be a carrier outage or issue 90% of the time. Try to update the SMSC number and powercycle the phone and test sending SMS.