Debt financing and two rounds of funding – $4.9 million as recently as of January – weren’t enough to keep Teleflip’s Flipmail service afloat. Flipmail enabled email to be sent as a text message from a mobile device. GigaOm reports that the entire company has folded, but it’s still not clear. The company’s website is completely down, but its Flipout service, which enables basic handsets to receive email as a text message, is supposedly still running, according to the company.

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In a short email to customers, it wrote: “We’ve gone as far as we can with our financial resources, and the piggy bank is empty. Effective Friday, August 15 at 9 AM, Flipmail will no longer be operating for either public or private use, and will be turned off at that time. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you, however our other popular email to text service, Flipout, will remain functioning.” The Santa Monica-based start-up got its first round of financing two years ago and has burned through that cash trying to reach a market segment that’s been narrowing as more affordable smartphones and other email-capable handsets are getting snapped up by the millions. We’ve reached out to CEO Tony Davis and will report more details as they come in.