Best Visual Voicemail? AT&T? YouMail? Google Voice? Unread counts? Reminders?

[consultant1027]

Jelly Bean 4.1.1 user on HTC One X+ on AT&T.

I'm a little disappointed with the AT&T Visual Voicemail App. First off, there's no pop-up on my lockscreen when I wake the phone that indicates there's a new voicemail. Only indication is the tiny Visual Voicemail icon in the notification bar which you have to swipe down to see the who called. There's no repeating reminder setting either as far as I can see that you have a voicemail waiting. I could easily not notice the tiny icon up there. And lastly, on the ATYT VVM app icon, there's not unread counter! Are you kidding me?

I see the most popular alternatives are YouMail and Google Voice. I see a history of thread with people having, shall we say, "uneven" experiences with YouMail. Considering this is an Android phone I would expect Google Voice is best. I already have a GV account but it has it's own phone number. I love the text transcription feature so I can actually instantly see the jist of the voicemail before deciding if I need to listen to it or not.

So how do you disable AT&T VVM and re-route the phone to your Google Voicemail box? (Assuming Google Voice IS the best solution.)

Here's the big question. If I use Google Voice, I assume in the app there's a way to call back the person that left the voicemail Can it be configured to call back using my regular phone and not call using Google voice? People will think I got a new number if when I press the callback function it uses Google Voice to call them back!

 

[Gekko]

i like Google Voice "Lite" -

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Set up or Remove Google voicemail fon your mobile phone

Set Up Google voicemail on your phone

Google Voice Lite lets you set up Google voicemail for your mobile phone number. You'll have all your voicemail in one place, with transcriptions, access to your past voicemails, and voicemail sharing options.

Set up or Remove Google voicemail on your mobile phone - Google Voice Help

 

[Trekker]

You should give YouMail a chance Granted, in the past, we've had our ups and downs as a small, scaling start-up. However, we've made big moves recently that continues to propel us forward towards being the best option in handling your missed calls.

I tried YouMail over a year ago, actually bought the Pro version (before I fully evaluated it.) - I'm on the Sprint Network and the biggest problem for me was a long delay - about 5 seconds - from the time the phone stopped ringing (from the caller's perspective) until my voicemail message played. That was too long of a delay - some people would think I didn't have voicemail or there was an issue so they would hang up without leaving a message. I reported this to YouMail support and while people were very helpful, having me try different YouMail numbers, the problem was never resolved so I was forced to switch to Google Voice, which was 100% better. When someone called, my Google Voicemail message played within a second or two of the phone answering (from the caller's perspective.) Not long after that, Sprint integrated Google Voice into their system so that my actual Sprint phone number became my Google Voice number.

So, did YouMail ever get the voicemail delay issue fixed when using Sprint?

 

[jokeyhaha]

I don't know if it has all the features you're looking for but I really like PF VoiceMail +. One feature I especially like is that I can receive faxes on my phone, with a copy sent to my email. It does play an alert and a reminder for missed calls/received VMs. And the widget shows a counter with new & saved VM count to see. It is a subscription of I believe 1.99 a month for the service. My husband is very sick and I get elevently billion calls and faxes pertaining to his care. It's well worth the $24 a year to me.

 

[rock15478]

I can tell you that I'm on Verizon with YouMail right now and the delay you are referencing definitely IS THERE. I get complaints about this ALL the time. I love YouMail but geez, fix this issue. I am a paying customer too. I've contacted their support several times (3 years ago even) and no improvement whatsoever has been made in this department. Switching to google voice this week

 

[tsells]

I've been using this one for a month now and it's the best one for me:

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...fusion.voicemailplus.and&hl=en&token=IoC9In-1

 

[smooth4lyfe]

Hullomail is the best... It's simple, easy interface, easy to set up

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 Boyyyyyy!

 

[eskayo]

Our free edition allows you to easily customize voicemail greetings for any or all of your contacts, block unwanted callers and txt'ers, and much more.

While this may be a highlight feature of the YouMail service, I have found that in practice, this is not well executed. I originally was drawn to this feature as I did not want any of my personal contacts to have to listen to a drawn out business greeting.

The problem is that there is no easy way to assign contacts, or multiple contacts to different groups. It's an extremely frustrating process to use their web app. If you've got 100+ contacts in your phone (which most people do), it's just not worth it. When I emailed support for advice on this, the response was:

Unfortunately at this time we do not have a efficient way to assign multiple contacts to a group at this time. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Until you do have an efficient drag/drop way to assign contacts to groups and manage existing lists/groups, maybe it would be best not to highlight how your service can use different greetings or block calls based on a call's caller ID.

 

[calijam]

AT&T is my carrier. A few of months ago I switched from iPhone to Nexus 4, and installed YouMail. My biggest issue is that when I'm on the phone, I don't get a notification that another call has come in, and so it rings into voicemail. I've missed important calls while on unimportant calls. Is this a settings config issue on the Android side, or the YouMail side, or a limitation that just is?

This issue and no Luxor in the Google Play Store are the only things that make me miss iPhone.

 

[Nick Smith13]

(completely biased response below -- disclaimer: I work for YouMail)

You should give YouMail a chance Granted, in the past, we've had our ups and downs as a small, scaling start-up. However, we've made big moves recently that continues to propel us forward towards being the best option in handling your missed calls.

Here's a general breakdown of our Free and Premium products:
https://store.youmail.com/

Our free edition allows you to easily customize voicemail greetings for any or all of your contacts, block unwanted callers and txt'ers, and much more.

Our business edition beefs up voicemail into an actual productivity tool with missed call auto-replies via txt or email, email notifications carbon copy, and lots more. We've also got Read-It Transcription plans that you can throw in, which ensures consistently high quality and accurate voicemail transcriptions edited by real people, which are always private and secure.

Ultimately, I understand that everyone has different needs. Check out our features and see if they align with what you need visual voicemail for. Realtors, management consultants, and other business-oriented people love our premium service and transcriptions (no more guesses on if the machine transcription is accurate!) We have lots of users that are more consumer-oriented that love the ease in assigning and maintaining special greetings for their contacts and sharing/saving the voicemails that are important.

Are you kidding me? Why would I pay $5 a month for visual voicemail? Google voice for sure

 

[rob damiani]

I use the AT&T Visual Voicemail app quite happily. It does give a notification when a new voicemail arrives, not a pop-up but still it's a visual notification..

Jelly Bean 4.1.1 user on HTC One X+ on AT&T.

I'm a little disappointed with the AT&T Visual Voicemail App. First off, there's no pop-up on my lockscreen when I wake the phone that indicates there's a new voicemail. Only indication is the tiny Visual Voicemail icon in the notification bar which you have to swipe down to see the who called. There's no repeating reminder setting either as far as I can see that you have a voicemail waiting. I could easily not notice the tiny icon up there. And lastly, on the ATYT VVM app icon, there's not unread counter! Are you kidding me?

I see the most popular alternatives are YouMail and Google Voice. I see a history of thread with people having, shall we say, "uneven" experiences with YouMail. Considering this is an Android phone I would expect Google Voice is best. I already have a GV account but it has it's own phone number. I love the text transcription feature so I can actually instantly see the jist of the voicemail before deciding if I need to listen to it or not.

So how do you disable AT&T VVM and re-route the phone to your Google Voicemail box? (Assuming Google Voice IS the best solution.)

Here's the big question. If I use Google Voice, I assume in the app there's a way to call back the person that left the voicemail Can it be configured to call back using my regular phone and not call using Google voice? People will think I got a new number if when I press the callback function it uses Google Voice to call them back!

 

[Mike Russo]

I cannot , for the life of me, can't edit my contacts in the you mail app....there's no , so called, "Pencil" under the contact on the web to edit!!!!! This app would be great if for that issue...going to go with Google voice

 

[Mathew-James Higham]

I use Youmail. I downloaded it for the reason that I can upload MP3's of pre-recorded studio quality voiceover recordings as the answering message to my personal and private clients. I haven't had an issue with people waiting very long to leave a message. However, the duplicate contact information needs to be easily remedied and there needs to be a way to merge contacts that are duplicates, as of right now I cannot see a way. As I have had a few people call now and receive differing voice message instructions. It's a tad embarrassing.

I like the Ditch feature as a new business and small business owner i am INNUNDATED with sales calls from merchant card services and I am glad I no longer have to screen each and every call and at the end of the day or during some quiet time I can log in and just assign each sales number that has arrived to "Ditch".

One thing that needs work is the APP. It is not intuitive enough for my needs and really should list everything under 1 inbox. I dont want to keep switching screens to see what calls i missed; what calls hung up; what calls were x y and z.

I only keep it because it is customizable. So far it works for me, but it has some big tweaks I would like to see happen before I even think about paying for it.

 

[Lenny Lacey]

The problem for me (I just uninstalled after 1 year) is it keeps saying contact sync is off and why on earth dose it after create its own contact in my contacts.. stop it!

 

[pbike908]

I am on Verizon Prepaid and I use Google Voice for Voice mail because Verizon Prepaid customers are excluded from Verizon's Visual Voice Mail unless one wants to pay extra.

I like Google Voice. It will email the transcripts to me and gives me notifications on my lock screen.

Folks just call my regular number, and the Google Voice takes over...

I see a poster referenced Google Voice Lite. I am unfamiliar with that. An internet search comes up with some links that are several years old. Perhaps Google Voice Lite is no longer available separately....