YouMail vs Google Voice Mail

[Brinybay]

Hi All

Up until now, I had a simple flip cell phone with not much on it. Ever since I discovered YouMail, I think it's great, but now there's something called Google Voice Mail that sounds similar, but I'm not sure if it's as configurable and easy to use as YouMail, mostly because I can't find where it's at on my Google account. All I can find is the option to place calls through Google Voice, which involves a charge. Forget that! YouMail bypasses the carrier VM and sends an mp3 of any voice mails to the email I choose, and can be customized very easily.

So where is the Google Voice Mail, how does it work?

 

[harrellj]

You have to sign up for Google Voice (voice.google.com) and it'll give you your own phone number, free. You can use that to make calls with, but it will use your minutes. You can also set it to be your default voicemail number (instead of using VZW's voicemail service) and with the Voice app, you can then listen/read your voicemails. Like youmail, it does do transcription. You also can receive free texts at that Voice number as well, but you'd have to use either the Voice app or the website to access them. Just like Youmail, if you're signed into the system, you can access your voicemails, regardless of which computer you're on. However, since you do get a new phone number (which you don't have to use), you can use that as a primary phone number and have it set to forward to other numbers. IE, when you're at work, any calls to that new number will go to your work phone, when you're at home, it goes to home. Heck, you can even set it to ring multiple phones (I have multiple Google accounts and have Voice on one of them for the sole purpose as being my In Case of Emergency contact, and its set to ring the cellphones of my emergency contacts if called).

 

[Brinybay]

Thanks for the quick response and good info. I think I'll just stick with YouMail. I've been using it for years and just now got it configured correctly to work with my new cell.

In case anybody else using YouMail is having problems, here's what I encountered. First, friends said they got a message saying VM is not set up, then they got a message saying they dialed incorrectly.

4 important steps I had to figure out.

1. Make sure that the settings for VM on the phone were set to "Carrier" (Apps/Settings/Call/Voicemail settings).

Go into YouMail and do the following:

2. Change the carrier to Verizon, (I just switched from T-Mobile).

3. Change the phone to the correct make/model, in this case HTC Droid.

4. Then follow the prompts to confirm the text messaging notification on YouMail.

Everything's good now.