YouMail: Cell phone voicemail that you didn’t know you needed
Next time someone calls you on your cell phone, freak them out (in a nice way) with a message like “Mark, good to hear from you…. finally…..”. YouMail is all about personalizing the same-old voice mail. It allows you to record customized greetings for your callers. Or you can use a few choice pre-recorded voice mails from their library - depending upon whether you want a professional one for your boss, or a loopy one for your friend (my favorite - Bart Simpson’s Don’t have a cow, man!).
Calls can be either be picked up on the phone, or emailed to you. The nice feature of the emailed version is that you can store all of your voicemails forever, along with the rest of your trash mail, just in case….
I like the ditchmail feature. You can totally block out someone whose call you don’t want to answer - they don’t even get to leave a voicemail. Of course, one can take a separate tack and have the call answered with come ominous messages from the website like “Warning - this call is being monitored” or a “Not in service” message, in French!
One feature that would be nice to have is a “direct to voicemail”. For example, for phone calls that have a blocked caller ID, that you don’t want to answer. They would go through directly to your voicemail so the caller can leave a message and then you can decide whether it is worth listening to, or returning the call.
The revenue model for YouMail was originally to start as a free service, and then to branch into a paid subscription model or commercial supported model in 2007. The service is still free, and the website maintains there is no intention of making it a paid service.
Youmail has gotten a fair amount of mainstream coverage in Newsweek and CNBC. YouMail also got rave reviews on MobileCrunch when they launched their beta in September of 2006.
Irvine based YouMail has received funding of $1.9 million from the Tech Coast Angels.
Tags : New Media, Technology
5 Responses to “YouMail: Cell phone voicemail that you didn’t know you needed”
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- Nov 19, 2007: BizOrigin » Blog Archive » YouMail Raises $4.5 Million in Funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners
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By Rob Klien on Jul 16, 2007 | Reply
Thereis a nice podcast interview with YouMail’s Dave Key on Frank Peters Show.
www.theFrankPetersShow.com
By Dube on Jul 16, 2007 | Reply
its a very nice service. I am just a new raving customer of YouMail. This is an amazing technology that could change the way that we communicate with friends, family,
By Jason Mezner on Jul 23, 2007 | Reply
I’ve been using youmail for a few months now and i love the personal greetings you can leave for your friends, ditching psycho exes, forwarding cool voicemails to my friends.
You get is a better voicemail system that lets you leave personal greetings for anyone that calls.
You can check voicemails online to and have notifications sent to you via email.
I set up youmail to forward all my notifications with the voicemail attached as an mp3 when i was traveling recently.
That way i could check email and voicemail in one mailbox.
what’s cool with youmail, besides that it’s free, is that they have a library of pre-recorded cool greetings. they even have some that sounds like your phone’s been disconnected. i used that with their ditchmail feature for telemarketers.
Anyway, youmail is pretty cool and my gf loves to hear my greeting that i made just for her. i actually fooled her into thinking i was leaving the message for everyone to hear then i fessed up!
Their web site is www. youmail.com
They’re still free and it says they’re still in beta.
-Jason M.
By George Encil on Jul 23, 2007 | Reply
I’ve been using Youmail for about 4 months and I must say this is an incredibly useful service. Being able to keep and organize voicemail records, forward voicemails from customers directly to contractors and undelete voicemails I thought were lost has actually affected the way I do business. Personalized voicemails aren’t just for family and friends either, since they’re simple to set up I use them to eliminate phone tag. A few of my clients have even commented on how they prefer my new voicemail to the lengthier version that came with my service provider. Cheers to youmail!