There used to be a popular saying that “no one was ever fired for buying IBM”. And for decades in the IT world that was actually true, until the internet revolution happened. Now products like Google and Facebook have become verbs so consumers and business alike today believe that company size equates to the best solution. In today’s mobile phone-driven world, it would seem that Google has replaced IBM when it comes to people jumping into a solution before evaluating the alternatives.
In this article we cover:
What Is Google Voice
Google’s communication tool addition to their G Suite is branded Google Voice. The service was created in 2009 and overhauled in 2017 and is basically a voice over IP (VoIP) service that lets you use a single number for multiple devices in addition to providing a few other important features.
According to TheDailyDot, the best Google Voice Features include:
- Free domestic (U.S., Canada) calls: You can call or text anyone in the U.S. and Canada free of charge.
- Group messaging: Free SMS messaging was always enabled on Voice, but Google added support for group and photo MMS messaging as part of the 2017 redesign.
- Cheap international calls: Like other VoIP services (i.e. Skype), you can make inexpensive international calls; you’ll just need to add credit to your account to pay for the small international fee. They typically run between one and five cents per minute, depending on the country you’re trying to reach.
- Voicemail transcription: Using complex algorithms, voicemail transcription turns your voicemails into text and sends them to your inbox or email.
- Personalized greetings: This feature lets you set different voicemail greetings for specific individuals or groups.
- Call forwarding: Once call forwarding it set up, calls made to any of your numbers will be rerouted to your Google Voice number. You can even have spam calls silently blocked.
- Record calls: Users can record a call by simply pressing the number four on the dial pad.
But before you close your eyes and just jump deeper into the Google pool, you should take a look at a few reasons why you should consider an alternative.
7 Reasons For A Google Voice Alternative
There is always a debate on what people perceive as a “safe bet” versus what is “best in breed”. While most people would prefer to feel comfortable, those who have done a bit of homework can get both comfort as well as all of the cool new features that make their life with a mobile phone much easier. Here are seven things to consider in order to justify looking at a Google Voice alternative:
- Bigger isn’t better: There is an endless debate on best-in-suite versus best-in-breed and after the internet bubble burst and the subsequent recession, it made sense to stick with the suite approach. But, now as the global economy recovers it is more appropriate to look at the best solution period.
- Blocking robocalls is harder than you think: the report of monthly volumes that news, magazine and government agencies depend upon for the most current data and in December 2019 alone showed 4.6B calls placed which was an average of 147.3M per day, 6.1M per hour, 1.7K per second or 13.9 per person. Without a resource like this Google Voice will not be able to know which calls to block and you will still be plagued with spam calls.
- Personalized versus professional greetings: Given that your first impression may be by phone, your telephone greetings become critical. If you are a business, your callers are deciding whether or not to do business with you and irate customers are deciding how helpful and competent you are.
- Do you know who is really calling: Still wondering “Who is really on the other end of the line?” or “Who called me?”. Google Voice alternatives can do an automatic reverse phone lookup to identify your missed callers.
- Ongoing Updates: As reported above the original Google Voice launched in 2009 and for all practical purposes wasn’t touched again until 2017. Do you really want to wait another 8 years for the next upgrade?
- No premium upgrades: For those looking to take their mobile phone experience to the highest level, especially if you are a home or small business, then the availability of premium services like conference calling, multiple numbers, auto-attendant, auto replies and forwarding become necessary. Unfortunately, without even having these options, you will need to look elsewhere.
- No Person to talk to: Why get lost in online help only when you really would prefer to talk to a live person? We live in an age where things have become too depersonalized so you should expect more.
If you want to start your comparison shopping, then check out a few of the Google Voice alternatives today.
What Is The Alternative?
Well, as you may have guessed, YouMail delivers a Google Voice alternative that you should take the time to evaluate. Or better yet, since it’s free, just try it for yourself (Apple or Android) for a while.
Bottomline, you are not stuck with everything Google has to offer even though you love their search engine. It turns out that there are alternatives that actually deliver more features with less invasion on your privacy and still not have to pay one cent for it, and it is easier than you think to get started. Yes, it is truly free forever and you can get started in less than 5 minutes.
I thought that all was great using the app, until I found that I was missing calls that I was expecting were being treated as spam robo calls and disconnected. Not knowing what other calls I may have missed, I uninstalled the app. If there is something else I can do to use the app again, I am open to suggestions.
Please contact our support team at support.youmail.com – explain your issue and we’re sure that they can make it all work for you.
I paid $90 for youmail and it no longer works, ive lost countless calls, texts, and dollars, wtf
Please contact support through live chat and explain your issue. We’ll make it right.
Getting so tired of junk mail into my gmail account. What can I do about it?
We wish we could help with your gmail problems, but we’re more about protecting people from phone call and phone message spam.
Robocalls is a big issue with Google voice
We can imagine! We on the other hand block robocalls from bothering our users and even give robocalls a Number Out of Service message so they don’t call back.
I think it is absolutely asinine to make an article why you need a Google Voice alternative and not even mention privacy once in the article. The writer is a joke.
Your article is very good and useful, thank you for sharing, bk8 hopes that next time you will have more good articles to send to all readers.