I like some of the voice mail features of Google Voice. In particular, I like:
* notifications (with emailed transcripts & audio)
* personalized greetings per caller or per group
* all voice mail messages in one place (including calls to mobile phone number)
I don't know of another voice mail service with these features (especially for free). Is there one?
But I am not happy with the rest of Google Voice, particularly the call quality and connection reliability (see my other posts on the topic). So I'm switching to something else (probably involving Voxalot or PBXes and CallCentric and/or Sipgate... maybe SipSorcery too).
Afer I make that switch, can I continue to use just GV's voice mail? If so, can I avoid a forwarding cost (per minute) when incoming calls get transferred to voice mail? (My sip provider gives me free incoming minutes but I will get billed if the call is forwarded to a DID.)
EDIT: looks like I would need either:
1. SIP address for my Google Voice account, or
2. free or low cost SIP to PSTN forwarding for just my GV number.
Thanks for any voice mail ideas.
EDIT: a very similar question came up here:
»
SIP to PSTN forwarding service?As far as I can tell, none of the solutions offered there would work for what I'm outlining above.
phonegnome looks interesting, but I'd have to install it at Google Voice
EDIT 2: I also found out about YouMail, but it is fairly expensive.
Random Thoughts: Too bad I can't just stay with Google Voice. Many months ago, after testing GV on a limited basis, I gave out the Google Voice number to everyone, including my clients. I had my client calls forwarding to my good quality landline. But after many, many bad experiences with my clients (poor sound quality, noise during calls, random droped calls, phone not ringing on incoming calls, and more), it will be a long time before I would even think about trusting Google Voice for my important phone calls. I'm back to my clients calling directly on my landline number. But I miss the voice mail of GV -- it fit my budget