Cheap virtual voicemail for existing US landline number?

December 18, 2012 6:36 AM

Best service to transfer existing home phone number to voicemail only?

I currently have a home phone (landline) but mostly use mobile phones. I get 2-3 interesting calls on the home phone per week and a lot of robo-calls. I would like to cancel my home phone service but keep the number in a virtual voicemail only account that could send voicemails to email.

I found that phone.com will probably do this for about $9 a month. Any other services that will let me transfer my existing landline number in the US. to a cheap voicemail only account?

posted by jacobsee to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I believe you can do that with Google Voice.
posted by xicana63 at 6:40 AM on December 18, 2012

Agreed; the way I would do this is to set up your answering machine to pick up immediately and say something like "jacobsee is no longer using this number; please contact him on 0123456789 instead". If you're worried about cold callers getting your mobile number that way, you could use a Voice number.
posted by katrielalex at 6:57 AM on December 18, 2012

You can do this through your existing phone company. It's call Voice-Mailbox in the sky. But why not just do that through Google and have the number ring on your cell?
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:58 AM on December 18, 2012

Vitelity is an alternative to Google Voice but it isn't free. They charge $18 to port your number in and then $1.49 per month. That gets you voicemail that forwards as mp3 to your email address. You never need to connect a SIP phone to their service if you just want the voicemail feature.
posted by ChrisHartley at 7:52 AM on December 18, 2012

Response by poster: Google voice doesn't port landlines at this time, according to the page you linked xicana.

I'd like to keep control of the existing number for a variety of reasons. The two calls per week are not from the same people so I'm worried about missing future calls from unknown callers.

I will look into keeping the number with my existing phone company (CenturyLink) but wonder if they would have the voicemail to email feature.

Vitelity looks like a good option -- I'll look into it, thanks Chris
posted by jacobsee at 8:14 AM on December 18, 2012

Friends who are 'never home' have simply dropped landlines and are now cell only. Why not tell the 2 interesting landline callers that you will be cell phone only as of next month?
posted by Cranberry at 1:40 PM on December 18, 2012

Transfer your landline number to a cheap prepaid cellphone, then transfer that to Google Voice.
posted by speedgraphic at 8:08 PM on December 18, 2012