Do you remember when visual voicemail was a big deal? In 2007, it was one of the big selling points of the iPhone. This revolutionary feature allowed you to see your voicemail messages as individual items on a list and access any message in any order. As advanced as that was, voicemail itself can still be an inefficient way to communicate. Case in point, how many of your voicemail messages are just requests to call back the person who left a message? Taken further, how many of your friends call you and don’t leave a message but expect you to call them back just by virtue of the fact that they had called you?
Clearly voicemail is no longer an appealing technology but it’s something we’ll have to live with for the foreseeable future. YouMail is a company that tries to make the voicemail experience more tolerable. YouMail does this by taking over as your voicemail service and this is set up very easily by dialing a code with your iPhone. Yes, you will be giving up AT&T or Verizon as your voicemail provider, but switching is painless and YouMail is just as reliable as your native provider. Additionally, you will be gaining more features and the service is free.
For those who have unlocked iPhones and whose wireless carriers don’t offer visual voicemail, this will be an obvious benefit. Gone will be the days that you have to dial into your voicemail account and navigate the voicemail menu. And for those who had visual voicemail to begin with, you’ll now access it through the YouMail app. Some people may prefer to access their voicemail from within the native iPhone app, but as you take advantage of the features of the YouMail service, you may find that you use neither the iPhone app nor the YouMail app very often anymore. Specifically, you can set up notifications to be emailed to you when someone calls and hangs up or if they leave a message. The former option is very useful when your signal is so weak or if your carrier is so unreliable that your phone doesn’t even ring. Normally, you wouldn’t even know that someone had tried to contact you if they hadn’t left a message because your phone wouldn’t register that particular call as being received, but it does register with YouMail and they will notify you by either email or a text message.
YouMail has other useful features such as customized greetings, photos alongside names of callers, call blocking, and voicemail sharing. Their default greeting is unique and very notable as it greets your caller by name. YouMail is a for-profit business and they make money by selling you additional services and features. For example, if you wanted transcripts of your voicemail messages, you would upgrade to their Premium service, which starts at $3.99 per month. Google Voice actually does nearly everything that YouMail can do and without a charge, but you do have to put up with yet another phone number to give to your contacts whereas YouMail does not have that additional layer of abstraction and feels more directly integrated with your wireless phone service.
Speaking of integration, for jailbroken iPhones, there is a customization provided by an independent programmer that allows you to access your YouMail voicemail from within the iPhone app. This tweak pushes YouMail up a notch higher than Google Voice.
As for the YouMail app itself, in its present state it offers a rudimentary feature set and does not give you access to all of the options available with the YouMail service. For that you will need to go YouMail’s website. Nevertheless, it is still adequate for day-to-day use and gives you quick access to changing your greeting.
YouMail is free.
Clearly voicemail is no longer an appealing technology but it’s something we’ll have to live with for the foreseeable future. YouMail is a company that tries to make the voicemail experience more tolerable. YouMail does this by taking over as your voicemail service and this is set up very easily by dialing a code with your iPhone. Yes, you will be giving up AT&T or Verizon as your voicemail provider, but switching is painless and YouMail is just as reliable as your native provider. Additionally, you will be gaining more features and the service is free.
For those who have unlocked iPhones and whose wireless carriers don’t offer visual voicemail, this will be an obvious benefit. Gone will be the days that you have to dial into your voicemail account and navigate the voicemail menu. And for those who had visual voicemail to begin with, you’ll now access it through the YouMail app. Some people may prefer to access their voicemail from within the native iPhone app, but as you take advantage of the features of the YouMail service, you may find that you use neither the iPhone app nor the YouMail app very often anymore. Specifically, you can set up notifications to be emailed to you when someone calls and hangs up or if they leave a message. The former option is very useful when your signal is so weak or if your carrier is so unreliable that your phone doesn’t even ring. Normally, you wouldn’t even know that someone had tried to contact you if they hadn’t left a message because your phone wouldn’t register that particular call as being received, but it does register with YouMail and they will notify you by either email or a text message.
YouMail has other useful features such as customized greetings, photos alongside names of callers, call blocking, and voicemail sharing. Their default greeting is unique and very notable as it greets your caller by name. YouMail is a for-profit business and they make money by selling you additional services and features. For example, if you wanted transcripts of your voicemail messages, you would upgrade to their Premium service, which starts at $3.99 per month. Google Voice actually does nearly everything that YouMail can do and without a charge, but you do have to put up with yet another phone number to give to your contacts whereas YouMail does not have that additional layer of abstraction and feels more directly integrated with your wireless phone service.
Speaking of integration, for jailbroken iPhones, there is a customization provided by an independent programmer that allows you to access your YouMail voicemail from within the iPhone app. This tweak pushes YouMail up a notch higher than Google Voice.
As for the YouMail app itself, in its present state it offers a rudimentary feature set and does not give you access to all of the options available with the YouMail service. For that you will need to go YouMail’s website. Nevertheless, it is still adequate for day-to-day use and gives you quick access to changing your greeting.
YouMail is free.
[etRating value=“ 4”]
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