i need voicemail to email service.

i've done zero research into this. has anyone else done any? if so,
what service(s) do you like, what are the caveats i need to be aware
of?

my ideal voicemail to email service would make an attempt at
converting the voicemail to text in addition to providing me with a
link to listen to the audio.

any and all help and suggestions are appreciated.

peace,
david

This probably isn't what you want, but vonage does that. My account sends me wavs of my phone messages.

It doesn't do any kind of voice recognition, though -- that would be cool, if it worked.

yeah, that's not exactly what i'm looking for.

i just did a quick google and spent a few minutes browsing one of the first results: http://www.innoport.com/voice_mail.asp

innoport has a nice feature where you can specify an ftp/sftp account into which they deposit your voicemail messages. that's pretty sweet. that's a nice solution to voicemail providers either putting limits on the number of voicemail messages you can receive or dinging you some serious $$s for increased storage quotas.

it would be nice if they stored the messages in ogg or mp3 format. of course i could create a script to auto-convert server-side.


another feature that would be essential would be a portable number. that way in case the service goes down the tubes of the internets i can switch to a new provider without notifying my clients of a number change. if number portability still isn't a reality i guess i could just forward from another number i control that's unlikely to change.

another idea on the number portability front would be to pick-up an 800 number. the bonus here of course would be reliable identification of the caller via ANI.


i suspect in general the service i'm looking for is probably best provided by a small agile provider running asterisk. anyone know of a "mom & pop" shop providing voice services via asterisk (or the like) and with the smarts and inclination to program creative solutions (like sftp audio delivery in a lossy format)?


peace,
david

I do this with my phone system - which is hosted on a linode. I run asterisk. You can configure user voice mail to forward a copy to email. You can probably create a simple script that attempts to transcribe it to text too.

which linode plan do you use?

I use Linode 512. Asterisk runs very nicelyon it (in addition to company websites and emails, and client websites and emails, mysql, and a host of other stuff).

The way I have asterisk set up, I have 5 incoming lines, 2 212 NYC telephone numbers, 1 line outbound with free local/national/internation to 30+ countries, and less than per penny per minute on my other outbound lines.

In total, I pay $40/month for linode, and about $16/month in voice services to run my business.

It's worth spending time to learn things like asterisk and server management. The cost savings from having to outsource is huge!

(if you like, send me email at linode at {username} dot com, and maybe we can work something out)

who do you pay that $16/month to?





i'm not so sure i want to spend the time managing an asterisk installation. i'm much more inclinded to go with a virtual pbx service. a quick google turned up these two providers (i have no idea how skilled they are):

http://www.virtualpbx.com/
http://gotvmail.com/





done.

You might try http://www.k7.net/ - they offer free (if limited) VM and Incoming Fax support. I've not used them myself, but I have a couple of friends who utilize the service for their podcasts.

Looks like the limits come in that they only hold 20 messages and they're limited to 5 minute VMs and 2 MB faxes.

Did you find out?

You may want to have a look at Easy Office Phone, everyone in our office gets their voicemail as e-mail attachments as we use their voice over ip pbx solution. The website is at http://www.easyofficephone.com