YouMail: trying this out today

We used to use MCI as our home phone provider.  Though the service wasn’t that great, they did have the feature of receiving emails when you received a new voicemail.

Since then, we switched to a digital phone service, which is cool and cheap, but they don’t have the option of receiving notification on voicemails.  This is horrible for me, because I rarely have time to drop what I’m doing, find a phone in the house (which is an adventure in itself), dial a voicemail number, and then sift through the voicemails I want and don’t want to hear.

Today, I found YouMail.  While it doesn’t work with your home phone carriers, it does work with cell carriers such as Verizon, Cingular, and T-Mobile.  So, I’m hoping that eventually, it will work with a home phone system.

YouMail allow you to replace your current voicemail system with theirs, in 5 easy steps.  They walk you through the entire process with both screen information and voice directions.  6 minutes after starting the process, I was listening to my very first voicemail using their web interface.  BUT, they do have the option you can select to be notified by either email (including having the actual voicemail attached) or TEXT message.  Pretty neat!

Another cool option is the ability to customize your voicemail box welcome message for each individual caller.  For example, you could have a welcome message just for family and friends and then one for business calls.  Create a separate welcome message for that special someone…

All-in-all, it’s pretty neat.  Will I keep using this for the remainders of my days?  Not sure yet, but I am going to give it a try.