TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Staying in contact with family

Looking for the most affordable and best way to stay in contact with family while in St. Martin. Any suggestions?

Sharon, Queen of SXM!! Go to the sponsors page here, and rent one of her cell phones. Much cheaper than using your own cell phone, and you can use it to make local calls. You can set up a specific time to call them, so it doesn't cost them anything. You can also receive texts on it, so people can either call you, or if they don't want to make an international call to you, they can send you a text and ask you to call them back.

Facetime, Skype, WhatsApp, etc all have free or cheap phone service with wifi.

I was shocked recently on a transatlantic flight that the whatsapp phone rang midway through the trip.
United has global wifi and they had not as of then eliminated the access to voice apps.

If you don't want to rent a phone, you can buy one at a discount store in the States and get a SIM once you are in St. Maarten.

Will be trying talkatone in three weeks. I never carried a rented phone around with me when I rented one and I have wifi in my unit. This seems to be a cheaper option than renting a phone on the island.

We always carry ours, for emergencies, if nothing else. If you have a flat tire or something, there might not be wifi available, to be able to call the car rental guy!

In the grand scheme of things, "cheaper" is not always better. Convenience has a price and the small cost of renting a phone is well worth it IMHO.