Prepaid phone just for texting?

You need an active account that the $5/month can be deducted from. $25 will keep the account active for 90 days, and for uninterrupted service it then needs to be refilled. $100 will keep the account active for 365 days. A $15 will just keep you going for 30 days, so that would be a waste of money in my opinion. With ATT you don't buy "minutes" as you do with some other providers. You have a $$ balance to use for different things, like making calls or texting and depending on your choices in packages there are different prices for those services.

(Or to be more accurate with my wording: Actually, the 90 or 265 days are the days before the account balance expires, the actual account is then left for another 60 days and is reactivated when a new refill is added. You will however loose what's left on the account if a refill isn't added in time, before the balance expires. Meaning 90 days for a $25 refill... Clear as mud? 😉 )

Not as far as I can see. A set monthly payment would be "Pick Ypur Plan", and the cheapest of those is $30/month.

Just a warning: Every time you send or recieves a message on AT&T's prepaid service, you are sent an annoying reminder about your text balance. If you don't mind other carrier's phone line-ups, I would suggest looking elsewhere. As a fellow heavy texter, I can easily tell you how awful it is. Unfortunately, I'm a sucker for gsm, so AT&T is my only choice.

Oh yeah! Forgot about that truly annoying message telling me my last action was 0.00... Many times I just sent my message and then put the phone away, only to find that message "occupying" the phone, and had to "accept" in in order to get the messages waiting for me...
So if you'll mainly intend to do lots of texting, do looka around before going for ATT!

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@juicy907couture wrote:

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@wesleykey wrote:
Looks like you all are wrong. Wal-Mart has $5 prepaid cards I can load monthly for 200 text messages with no further commitment required. That is what I intend to do. Thanks, Wesley

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Yes, but as hme83 has said, you have to physically add it every month. And all it does is add $5 to your balance, you still have to call into customer care to add the messaging package.

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but wesley is looking at it as only spending $15 every 90 days instead of $25.

Seems like a perfectly reasonable approach based on the OP's stated intentions for the phone. 

I'd want to keep in mind that if I don't keep at least $0.01 on the account "monetarily" (i.e. not converted to a messaging package) I won't even be able to make a mobile to mobile phone call from it (should I want/need to).  With the current message plan pricing, he'll have 1 cent remaining, so it shouldn't be an issue; but cutting it that close, it's worth keeping in mind if you intend to "maybe" use the phone for a very occasional phone call.