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"I don't know about you, but I hate receiving bad news via voicemail. There's just something nauseating about seeing a new message from a dreaded contact and then being forced to actually listen to it.\nMaybe you don't share my plight, and you're just trying to avoid mom's messages, or you're simply looking for a way to get your voicemail via email or text instead. Either way, we've got three pretty cool options for you to test out. Keep reading to find out where your voicemail should take up residence.\nJott\nWhether it's for their iPhone app or their innovate approach for recording voice notes to send via email, text, or Twitter, Jott gets a lot of love. What Jott is not known for, however, is their voicemail to text or email service, but only because it's brand spankin' new. The new voicemail transcription service starts at $9.99/mo - that's a lot of buck for bang you can get elsewhere. Ready to say sayonara to this voice recognition mainstay already? Wait just a moment, and keep reading as we take a closer look. Maybe your voicemail will be routed to Jott's box after all.\nThe Features\nJott's new iPhone app won't be released until February 2nd when the service officially becomes paid-only, but we can assume that the app will support some integration with the voice transcription service - and that would be cool. In addition, Jott comes with standard transcription features and a few added bonuses. It's also incredibly easy to use and setup.\n\nAfter you pay, Jott will show you how to configure your voicemail to redirect to their service, and help you add your contacts manually, via online address book or import. \n\nOnce you complete the quick setup process, you can adjust your voicemail settings by navigating to My Account - Voicemail. Make a few tweaks and you can start reading your voicemail via email, text, or Web interface, set call-back reminders (this is awesome), and reply, forward, or share messages too. Of course you also have the added bonus of leveraging Jott's existing features, which let you treat your voicemail as a task and benefit from integration features with Google Calendar, Facebook, WordPress, and Remember the Milk to name a few.\nI'm loving the service and there's really not much to dislike, expect for the price, which I find to be pretty darn unreasonable. I'd gladly pay $9.95/mo for an unlimited service, but a 40 message cap is a bit much.\nThe Fees\nThe Jott Voicemail 40 plan comes with 40 transcribed messages (there are no odd limitations and constraints as opposed to YouMail) for $9.95 a month, and each additional message will set you back 35 cents.\nNot ready to buy just yet? Neither am I; I opted for the free trial which gets me one week of free transcriptions. Be forewarned, however, the free trial is still all strings attached and requires you to enter valid credit card information to test out the service. So, if you're unsatisfied, remember to setup an automatic reminder (why not use Jott?) to refresh your memory and deactivate the service.\nNote: Pricing is oddly similar to PhoneTag's pricing structure.\nThe Final Test\nThe big question is: does the voice transcription really work? If I'm going to pay upwards of $10 bucks a month for full service, I want it to work, right? Well I'll let you decided. I had my brother, Jeff, leave me a voicemail. His message said, \"Hey Jenn this is Jeff, I'm picking up some food, call me back.\" Jott sent me two text messages. The first one let me know about the call, and the second one came about 60 seconds later and said this:\n\nI'm actually impressed. One word wrong (Chad instead of Jeff) is pretty fantastic based on my previous experience with Jott's transcription. What do you think?\nIf you're not happy, you can disable the service by dialing ##004# from your phone. To back out of the fees, however, make sure you remember to visit the Jott - Billing Settings page.\nYouMail\nWe wrote about YouMail back when they released visual voicemail for smart phones, which we still think is a pretty cool service for those of you without iPhones. Here we take a closer look at their voice transcription service to see whether or not YouMail is right for your voicemail needs.\nThe Features\nYouMail is feature-rich, so much so that even a super user of sites, like me, might find it pretty overwhelming at first. If you can handle the robust feature set, though, YouMail is great at walking you through the steps needed to create, customize, and manage your voicemail needs.\n\nFirst things first, you'll want to create your account and configure your voicemail service to redirect to YouMail. The process is slightly different for each phone, but if you navigate to My Account - My Phones you can get the activation code you need for configuration. Follow the instructions and make sure you get a confirmation screen similar to mine above.\nOnce you get going, you'll start noticing all those abundant features I referenced earlier. Just to name a few, YouMail lets you create custom greetings (think recording or uploading options) for each of your contacts, block voicemails from specific numbers (this is neat), customize how/when you receive notifications, reply to callers via text or email, and manage multiple phones. The Web interface also provides a plethora of options for online voicemail management.\nWhat I love is YouMail's ability to recognize a saved contact and greet that contact by name, without me having to manually create a custom greeting. To test out the service, I had my brother call me and leave a dummy voicemail. When he was done, he shared that he was a little freaked out (but mostly amused) by the automated greeting that addressed him by name.\nWhat I dislike about YouMail is the process of adding contacts. Unless you have all your contact information current in your email address book (ie. Gmail), then you're going to have to add each contact manually. Even though this is pretty standard across these types of services, if YouMail were to add support for my computer's address book, they would be more likely to get my business today.\nThe Fees\nYouMail is reasonable priced compared to other voicemail transcription options. Cheapskates (hey that's me!) can select from two different free plans, one offering you text and email transcription from a single contact, the other offering 5 free transcriptions per month \u2014 that seems fair.\nPaid plans start at $3.99/mo, which only gets you 10 - 15 seconds of transcribed messages via text or email. If you want the whole message, be prepared to pay $6.99 for 50 messages, or $17.99 for unlimited messages.\nThe Final Test\nA voice transcription service is only as good as its ability to transcribe voice messages to text updates. So let's take a look at my brother's message to me. Here's what he said, \"Hey Jenn, this is Jeff, I'm picking up food. Call me back. Thanks.\" Here's what YouMail sent me via text:\n\nSo what do you think? It's not perfect, and the free plan does warn that transcriptions are lower quality for unpaid plans, but is it good enough? The problem is that for important voicemails, every word counts. Unfortunately a trial like free plan that doesn't transcribe messages to my liking isn't going to convince me to shell out my slaved over pennies.\nIf you're like me, you'll want to test out a few options before banking on one service. Just remember to discontinue your YouMail service and follow the simple instructions to disconnect and return to your regular voicemail service. You should get a message similar to the one below that confirms your switch back.\n\nPhoneTag\nPhoneTag, the service formerly known as SimulScribe which offers a nice bridge to GrandCentral, has managed to stay competitive in the voicemail transcription space. Even though Jott has jumped into the fray with shiny new features, we wonder if a more established voicemail to text or email service can provide better transcription and similar prices.\nThe Features\nThe service, which works with most carriers, phones, and mobiles, may not be as feature-rich as YouMail or as integration savvy as Jott, but it does get the most important thing right.\nOnce you sign up, PhoneTag will transfer your voicemail service to their system. You will need to record a greeting and adjust voicemail box options by calling (800) 784-0457, which is also the same number for audio voicemail retrieval. When you're done, you're pretty much good to go.\n\nThe interface isn't pretty, but it is easy to use. Once you're registered and your phone is configured, you can adjust email and SMS delivery options which include the ability to attach audio to email, send notifications before transcription, upload greetings, add contacts via import, and use the online voicemail message interface to save, view, and listen to new messages.\nPhoneTag offers the least functionality of the three options. No custom greetings per contact, no reminders, no blocked voicemails, and when it comes to adding contacts you can only import them \u2014 you can't even manually add them. I also really dislike the default voicemail greeting, which greets callers with your phone number (You've reached XXX-XXX-XXXX) instead of your name.\nThe Fees\nThis one doesn't come cheap either. The per message fee is 35 cents, a 40 message \"Tag\" plan is $9.95 + 25 cents for each additional transcribed message, and the unlimited plan is - wait for it - $29.95/mo. Yikes!\nYou can opt for the 7-day free trial, but like Jott, PhoneTag requires you to pre-purchase your plan and provide valid credit card information.\nThe Final Test\nPhoneTag, the service I wanted to fail (it offers the least amount of features), returned the best results period. Not one mistake. My poor guinea pig testing brother called me one last time and said, \"Hey Jenn, this is the last time I'm gonna call you. Do you want food? Bye.\" PhoneTag immediately texted me with the following:\n\nPerfect. Since this is an area where exactness matters, I've really got some thinking to do here. Is transcription quality more important than miscellaneous features? Is it worth $29.99/mo? What's your take?\nBuy or Sell?\nI'm still deciding whether or not the convenience of having text versions of voicemails is worth a monthly fee. If I had to decide today, however, I'd be wracked with indecision. Jott's features and integration options appeal to the productive person in me, YouMail blows me away with their features, and PhoneTag gets transcription dead on.\nI think I need some help from you on this one. If you're using one of the above services (or one we didn't mention), what makes it worth the money? Let us know about the good, the bad, and the ugly in the comments.\nInterested in more mobile resources? Check these out:\n- Voice Messaging for Groups: Top Services Compared- MOBILE PRODUCTIVITY TOOLBOX: 45+ Mobile Productivity Resources- Top 30 iPhone Apps for Organization and Productivity- 20 BlackBerry Mobile Apps for Organization and Productivity\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, bouillabaisse"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/01/14/visual-voicemail/>