Not Dead Yet: 5 Voice Mail Alternatives

We've talked in the past about getting rid of voice mail entirely on smartphones. Not only is it a viable option with modern phones via various services and options, it's practically a given among those who almost never use a phone as a phone.

But that's not an option for everyone. Voice mail, love it or (most likely) hate it, is a necessary evil for far too many, especially those who use their smartphones for work. Like it or not, you have to be available to customers and clients by voice.

In a move to make the voice mail on iPhones more palatable, Apple revamped the Visual Voicemail feature with iOS 10 to not only give you instant access to playing messages, but also an instant transcription of the message. (It only works on iPhone 6s ( at Amazon) or higher and has to be supported by the carrier, but in the US that's just about everyone.)

Sounds nice, but it pretty much sucks. It can slow down the arrival of messages, and transcriptions are littered with typos. Sometimes if the iPhone can't figure out what's said, it won't display the message. Plus, there is no way to turn off the transcribing.

What's a person utterly dependent on decent voice mail to do? Make a switch. There are a few app/services out there that not only may improve this experience, but could add features you didn't even know you wanted.

YouMail: Visual Voicemail Replacement

At the top of every collection of voice mail replacement lists is YouMail. That's because it not only offers a replacement to Apple's Visual Voicemail on iOS 8 or higher (even if jailbroken), it also supports Android. Because it's an app, you can access it on tablets, an iPod touch (give your kids a phone number they can't call out on!), and the Web. Use your existing number (you're sending all your ignored calls to YouMail—it's called "conditional call-forwarding") or get an entirely new number to distribute to customers/clients/friends/family.

Callers interact with the full automated virtual receptionist you set up via YouMail, even getting an automated text from you if warranted. YouMail supports free conference calls with no PINs necessary, and best of all it intercepts robocalls and tells them your number is out of service. You can even specify numbers YouMail should intercept for you (like your ex or your boss). And that is all for free—but there are some ads between the voice mails to help them pay for it.

If you want the extras, like the voice mail transcriptions (which can be read in the app or forwarded to email or text), recording conference calls, smart greetings personalized for individual callers, auto-forwarding, an automatic second line to hand out just for voice mails, and more, you have to pay, either $5/month for premium or $10/month for the SMB Business Plan.

Google Voice

Google's answer to voice mail is long in the tooth—it dates back to 2009 on the desktop and while it added apps for iOS (after Apple blocked it for a long time) and Android, it hasn't changed much until this week, when it began to slowly roll out a new look that matches that of other Google services.

The primary function of Google Voice is, thus far, unchanged. It provides a virtual "unified" phone number to hand out to everyone, which rings to all your phones, be they cellular, office, or home landline (ha ha, as if) simultaneously. Just answer the one you are close to. You also have the option, as with YouMail, to use your existing cell number, set up personalized voice mail for specific callers, send and receive SMS messages, forward saved voice mail messages, and to block numbers. (You can skip all that and just use Google Voice Lite for voice mail only, if preferred.)

Ignored calls go to the Google Voice voice mail. Google Voice was the first to pioneer the whole voice mail transcription thing. You can bet that all that voice-recording work is playing into services like Google Home ($99.00 at Target) today; user ability to edit/correct the transcripts helps Google as much as you.

Google Voice even lets you "donate" a voice mail directly to Google so they can manually transcribe it specifically to improve the accuracy of the transcription server. Traditionally Google Voice is laughably bad at transcriptions—but no worse than anyone else's, really. Still, Google is promising transcription improvements with the new update. Also new: transcriptions in Spanish.

If you've got a Google account (like Gmail or Google Drive or anything else) you've already got a free Google Voice account (if you live in the lower 48 states). You simply need to activate it at google.com/voice.

HulloMail

Another free voice mail service that features apps for iOS and Android as well as a Web interface. Voice mail transcription is an in-app purchase extra that costs $2.99. In the free version you have to put up with ads; the premium version for $8.99 per year allows creation of custom greetings based on who's calling, a lot more stored messages (1,000 instead of just 100), and a few other things. To get to the real useful stuff, like searching messages or blocking callers, you need the Business Individual version for $59.99 per year.

InstaVoice

One of the few services like this with an app for Windows Phone, as well as iPhone and Android, InstaVoice is totally and utterly free. You can use it with multiple phone numbers to get all your voice mail messages in one place. If you miss a message (or a caller that didn't leave a message), that pops up as well, and an alert will go to your email. You can reply to messages via SMS. What it doesn't do is block callers or transcribe messages. But if all you want is a colorful new interface for your voice mail with a couple of extras, you might consider it.

No More Voice Mail

This one isn't a voice mail service at all. It's anti-voice mail. Grab the app for iOS or Android, follow the instructions, and the conditional forwarding kicks in so any call you don't answer will shunt to No More Voicemail—but the caller never gets a voice mail, just unlimited ringing and ringing. You, on the other hand, never have to worry about calling back. Like most of the services above, it doesn't work with pre-paid plans, only contract plans, mostly with the big name carriers in the US.