Voicemail Transcription Service Smackdown!

Today’s voicemail is about more than just listening to your voice mail. It’s about voicemail forwarding, reading, and online storage. The year is 2008 and just listening to voicemails is so 2000.

The services we will be discussing take your voicemail to the next level. Their main goal is to change how you use voicemail and turn it into something useful. They give you more control beyond saving and deleting voicemail. They take a voicemail you receive, convert it to text, and then send it to you via sms or email. This can be very helpful weather you’re sitting at a business meeting or traveling in loud environments. It even comes especially handy if you have to keep a voicemail discreet and confidential. A majority of the services out there are free but to get the full features a monthly fee is usually added.

We're going to compare three of the most popular services out there: YouMail, GotVoice, and PhoneTag.

In order to get up to date on the voicemail features you’re going to first have to choose a provider that can handle you’re oh so delicate voicemails. Once you choose your provider, run through some of the features to see if it’s to your liking. We have compiled some of our favorites and give our top three choices with pros and cons of each.

YouMail

The newest kid on the block steps up to bat and hits one out of the park. YouMail came out swinging with features like online “visual voicemail” and cool custom greetings for specific callers. It uses an online web interface that looks very similar to GrandCentrals. YouMail allows you to acess your voicemail from you computer or your handheld. It allows easy playback of messages through phone or through the web site.

Pros

• Group callers: You can group your callers under work, school, or anything you name it allowing to contact with the masses easier.
• Photo with voicemail: If your friends subscribe to YouMail then every time they leave you a message you will see their photo right next to their message. This makes it a whole lot easier than trying to remember people’s numbers. The only hard part is getting everyone you know to subscribe.
• Specific greetings: This feature allows your friends to know how cool you are on your voicemail and lets your boss know you’re constantly staying professional.
• Beta transcriptions of voice mail to text: Again, being in beta we cant really knock it until the bugs are out but so far the transcribing worked pretty well when sending to text.
• “Visual Voicemail”: Now you can listen to your voicemails as you please through a mobile web browser.
• Ditch voicemail: Pretty much falls under custom greetings but better. Instead of hearing a custom greeting they will get a busy signal or the post office. Heres to you telemarketers

Cons

• Requires audio download to play voice mail from web. This really bugs me again, because if you’re in a no reception area or on the edge network and have a long voicemail, then kiss the visual part of voicemail goodbye. Not to mention the time you spend logging in and scrolling through your voicemail.
• Too many texts.* If you opt to receive your messages transcribed to you in text not only will you get up to 4 messages detailing the voicemail, you will also get another text to let you know you have a voicemail. A problem if you don’t have an unlimited text plan.
• No message attachment: It would be nice to have the original message attached to the email when sent to me so that I can listen to it. Unfortunately there’s no attachment, only the availability to log on and play.
• Broken links: Even then when I tried to log in through my Treo 750 to listen to my voicemails I would get an error message stating it was not ready.
• No notification: Worst part of all is the notifications did not work on my Treo 750. That means if I didn’t subscribe to the text notifications then I didn’t get voicemails. We both know that’s not good when voicemails start piling up like flies on sh… you get the point.

Well keep in mind that YouMail is still in beta and has a few kinks to work out. Not bad for the rookie, but not good enough to trust your voicemail to yet.

Overall: 2 of 5

GotVoice

Got voice seems to work out some of the kinks that You Mail missed. It gets the notifications on your phone right to start with and the links that come in the emails actually work. This makes Got voice a halfway decent service that stores your voicemails online and sends you notifications via email. It conveniently allows a user to get a message with a glance at your mobile device. It supports multiple phone numbers like mobile, home, and work. GotVoice has a nice interface and is easy to use.

Pros

• Easy to use and set up: I blazed through the set up, dialed their special number to activate, and was ready within minutes. Very easy
• Gets notifications: GotVoice 1 YouMail 0. If I don’t get notifications on my phone like a beep or buzz to let me know when I get voicemail then that’s an automatic foul.
• Ability to send messages from Got Voice web site: Once you log into your GotVoice account you can send custom messages to others.
• Avatar reading: You can have a cool little avatar like the devil speak the voicemail to you. Fun matching the avatars with the different personalities that call you.
• Subscribe to voicemails in iTunes as podcast: If you’re looking to take your voicemails with you on your ipod or nano then you can simply subscribe to your voicemails in iTunes and transfer as needed. This could be useful if you have to share voicemails with others.
• Ability to add a background noise: If for some reason you want callers to think you were in China Town when you set up your voicemail then you can do that. Got voice has several different background noises to play when a caller gets to your voicemail. Yes, they even have a coffee shop atmosphere for us bloggers.
• Ability to transcribe messages: Best part is messages can be transcribed for a small fee of $9.99 per month.

Cons

• No custom messages: YouMail kicks GotVoice in the butt with this one. No option to set specific voicemail to specific caller.
• In order to get cool features you must pay: If the product is right well be glad to pay, but can you give us talking avatars or transcribing for free. I would do for one or the other. Till then you must pay to play with avatars and transcribing
• No way to import contacts: I hope you have a couple hours to spend, because this could take a while Mr. 3000 contact CEO.
• “Visual Voice Mail” only through web site: The iPhone does visual voice mail right and you can play your messages right from your phone. GotVoice on the other hand requires you to log into their mobile site to download and play the messages. (Very time consuming)

Overall GotVoice is an excellent service for doing cool things like storing your voicemail in the cloud or having some crazy avatar read you your voice mail. Then again the need to log into the mobile site and download the voicemail tends to bug me. Good stuff, but it's not knocked out of the park.

Overall: 3 of 5

PhoneTag

This is what I currently use.

Originally Simulscribe, PhoneTag decided to change its name to give users a familiarity with the service. PhoneTag recently merged with Google's Grand Central allowing for a user to bring all phone numbers under one roof. Now when users sign up for PhoneTag they are issued a GrandCentral number making their voicemail circle complete. The best part is if a call in missed at GrandCentral, PhoneTag steps in to transcribe the message and send it as an email to the user. PhoneTag works with a variety of applications and mobile devices. PhoneTag is one of the robust services out there supporting Blackberrys, Goodlink and much more.

Pros

• Easy to manage website: The moment you log in you are greeted with all you voicemails with your newest voicemails at the top. Tabs across the top show different things you can do with PhoneTag making it a very clean display
• Ability to import contacts: As it should be.
• Several notification options: PhoneTag allows for a wide array of customizing how you get your voicemail. These include the ability to activate or deactivate:
  • Send notifications before transcription
  • Attach audio
  • Send transcribed message
  • Play tagline
  • Send message as text
  • Voicemail message attached
• Self service: If for any reason you have to wipe your phone you can have PhoneTag resend you the activation process to you phone
• Native App for Windows Mobile: Best of all, PhoneTag offers a native app you can install on Windows Mobile for true visual voicemail. The app is pretty darn good -- it gets notifications about as fast as standard push email and lets you manage, read, and listen to voicemails directly from the app. I've found that with the app the voicemails sometimes seem to 'cut out' a little early from time to time, but the app is also still in Beta. The app is buried in their support section, though, find instructions here or just point your phone's browser to http://mobile.simulscribe.com
• Grand Central Integration. Best "Find me Follow me" phone number meets best voicemail transcription service.

Cons

• No custom messages per specific caller
• In order to use the service there is a subscription
• No built in player so voicemails have to be downloaded

Overall I’m going to have to go with PhoneTag for the simple reason of the transcribing. Granted you have to pay for it, but its well worth it. It transcribes the messages nearly perfect and archives all messages in the cloud if you ever needed to refer back to one.The fact that it works with blackberrys and The ability to play the message from the attachment is just icing on the cake.

We've taken a look at Simulscribe before, hit that link there to see a video of it in action!

Overall: 4.5 of 5.