Green Tech Girl

I have had a Google Voice number from before it was Google Voice, from back in the Grand Central days. I have my Google Voice number set up to ring to a free inbound Internet phone number through SipGate. With my Internet phone “modem” I now have a free “home” phone number with outbound calling provided by Google Voice. I’m not sure how long this will last but I’m enjoying it for now.

So Google Voice has a lot of positives if you choose to get your own Google Voice number, including the ability to dial out from it to the US and Canada for free. (Technically, it dials your phone and then connects you to your caller.) For the purposes of this review I’m looking at how Google Voice compares to its main voicemail competitor, YouMail.

Visual voicemail is a method of accessing voicemail that is similar to email. In other words, your messages come in, they show up on a list, and you get to pick and choose which one you hear first. Traditional voicemail means you have to sit through your friend’s long-winded rambling message just to get to the message you really want to hear.

It’s really crucial to understand there are two levels of Google Voice service. One is where you get your own Google Voice number assigned. (This will give you the ability to call out with that number.) Two is where you do not get your own Google Voice number but instead tie your cellphone number to use Google Voice’s visual voicemail services. Very important! When signing up for Google Voice, you MUST ask for a free phone number immediately or you will have to pay for an “upgrade” later at the cost of $10. You can always tie your cellphone voicemail to Google Voice even with a Google Voice number, so it’s always best to choose to get the free number when signing up. (Google purposefully makes this very confusing, it seems, so choose carefully when selecting which path upon signup.)

If you don’t want a Google Voice number, and just visual voicemail, then YouMail might also be a good option for you.

I recently started using YouMail because I wanted visual voicemail on my cellphone and needed an alternative to Google. Google Voice offers visual voicemail for cellphone numbers, but when I originally tried it, my number via my provider (Sprint/Nextel) was not set up for “conditional call forwarding” and I could not get it to work. When I heard about YouMail, I decided to try that instead. Somehow they way YouMail does forwarding through your phone’s settings vs. dialing in with a code as Google instructed works for me.

I also felt like I’d like to keep my cellphone voicemail separate from my Google Voice…if just because I’m sick and tired of Google encroaching on every aspect of my life! Google, youire great, but there is too much of a good thing. So I like to try alternatives.

Here is a look at the pros and cons of both:

The big difference is in transcriptions. YouMail offers its visual voicemail service for free, but unfortunately charges for transcriptions. Google Voice offers free automated transcriptions, but they are generally known to suck to the point of being useless. YouMail decided to scrap automated transcriptions in favor of pushing a “premium” transcription service that utilizes live human beings to clean up the transcriptions.

For business people, paying for YouMail’s much more accurate premium service is probably worth the monthly cost. For personal use, I’m not so sure it’s worth it. I thought I might miss having my visual voicemails transcribed in YouMail because I’ve had them transcribed so much in Google…but surprisingly, I don’t miss it much. When it comes to my friends, I’m really more interested in being able to pick and choose the order in which I play my messages. If YouMail had a really cheap automated transcription option with their “pro” package I might upgrade, but I’m not motivated enough to pay a premium for human-edited transcriptions. Others, however, swear by the premium transcription service as a major timesaver.

Interface. Google’s website interface is much better. YouMail’s is covered in big graphic ads if you are a free customer. I don’t mind advertising supporting my free services, but did YouMail really need to stick a big graphical block in the top middle of my home page? However, I much prefer YouMail’s interface when it comes to my Blackberry app. It’s simpler, cleaner, and will even show pictures of my contacts. Google scrunches everything up so that it’s too small to scan easily.

Extras. Google Voice focuses on the basics. Voice mail. Transcription. They don’t offer any “fun” frills. In fact, they removed them when they took over Grand Central. I remember Grand Central had all sorts of neat options, such as the ability to change the ringer that people hear when calling you. That’s all gone now. You get only the most basic of options now. You can use your phone to record a new greeting at Google Voice. You can even have different groups be routed to different phones (if you have the full Google Voice number) or messages. But you can’t easily customize beyond that.

YouMail, on the other hand, is a lot more fun. You can easily upload an MP3 file to be your greeting. Their automated system will also say caller’s names if you choose their “SmartGreeting.” There’s an entire community of YouMail users who submit user-created MP3 greetings that you can use on your phone. It’s extremely easy to swap out greetings and you can even assign them to individual callers.

Using YouMail, I was able to easily upload an MP3 greeting I made with the Old Spice Voicemail Generator.

All in all, I think YouMail is a slightly better service when it comes to visual voicemail services and if you truly need top-notch transcription, I hear their service is stellar. However, Google Voice is also an excellent visual voicemail service, and its transcription, though lousy, might save enough time to be worth the mistakes it brings. (One time I had Google Voice identify a caller as “Charlie Sheen.”)

Since both basic services are free, it can’t hurt to try them, and see which one you like the best.

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