Text option does not appear next to email address in contacts

[android_Help]

I recently crawled out of a cave and left my flip phone behind. Of course, now I am trying to do exactly what I did with my G'Zone on the Moto X. I want to send a text to an email address. The 'text' option does not appear in the Contacts list next to email addresses - it only appears next to phone numbers.
Is there any setting I can adjust to allow this to happen easily? Really don't want to d/l an app for that - its seems too simple unless the powers that be are forcing us to use an email service which will probably increase my data usage. ??
Thanks.

 

[ScottMGS]

It's not "the powers that be", it's the technology. Text messages (SMS) use the phone network and, therefore, need a phone number as the "address". E-mail uses the data connection (3G, 4G, etc.) so you'll have to use an e-mail application for your contacts with only an e-mail address.

 

[android_Help]

Thanks Scott. Bear with me for a follow on question:
Why did this work on my GZone? I selected "New text msg", opened Contact List, selected email address and wrote/sent text to the email address...it did not require a phone number.
Thanks for your time!

 

[ScottMGS]

Thanks Scott. Bear with me for a follow on question:
Why did this work on my GZone? I selected "New text msg", opened Contact List, selected email address and wrote/sent text to the email address...it did not require a phone number.
Thanks for your time!

Sorry, I don't know what a GZone is or how it works. It must have had some way to send an e-mail, maybe a service gateway at the phone or server level that redirected it to e-mail.

 

[hisense]

I think this might be the Verizon Casio GZ one cell phone. If so, Verizon provided a free feature called Vtext that enabled sending and receiving texts via email service.

Now that you have a smart phone and a data plan, you can send an email direct and text messages direct. So you have two separate features now.

 

[weksa]

To be fair to the OP so that s/he doesn't seem crazy, my friend has sent texts from an iPhone 4 to my email. To be exact, it was a received text on the iPhone that was forwarded to my email. I haven't seen any built-in thing on the Moto X. It may require another messaging app.