A group voice mail service with mobile alerts?

July 24, 2006 2:07 PM

Do you know of a group voice mail service with mobile alerts? I'm looking for a way for my 30+ person band to communicate using cell phones while on tour.

Ideally any member can leave a message for the group, and everyone else gets a notification of a new message on their cell phone, via text message (or phone ring).

I've checked out upoc.com but the voice mail system is $5/month *per person*, and the group is a bit hesitant about the text message setup - they'd prefer voicemail.

I thought something like SayNow.com would work, and is actually what got us started on this idea, but it's more of a broadcast system than a group communication tool- we'll probably use it for gig alerts instead.

posted by squishy to technology (4 comments total)

What about something like this?

From that site:

* James is a manager of a football team (20 players).
* He uses etribes Groups to create a group and adds all 20 players (with their mobile numbers).
* Every Thursday he signs into etribes Groups online and sends the whole team a text message asking who can play on Saturday.
* He receives the replies on his mobile.
* On Saturday morning he uses his mobile to send the whole team a text reminder about the match.


Would this work? I wonder if each cell phone can start new messages for the network... Good Luck.
posted by ifranzen at 4:52 PM on July 24, 2006

Thought of something else: What if you got one of those free online voicemail accounts. Search around and find one of those. Give the # to all band members, and when someone has an important message instruct them to call the free VM # and leave a message. Instruct members to check for messages once a day (they can do it from any phone with a PIN number, make sure no one actually DELETES the messages) for important updates.
posted by ifranzen at 4:59 PM on July 24, 2006

Thought of something else: What if you got one of those free online voicemail accounts. Search around and find one of those. Give the # to all band members, and when someone has an important message instruct them to call the free VM # and leave a message. Instruct members to check for messages once a day (they can do it from any phone with a PIN number, make sure no one actually DELETES the messages) for important updates.

We used to have something like this, but the "polling" method didn't work very well - we currently just have a manual phone-tree system that quickly gets tedious.

Etribes looks a lot like upoc, but it doesn't look like they have a way for everyone to text everyone. Upoc might end up being the best for us, but not everyone in the group uses text messaging, hence the search for a voicemail solution.

Thanks for the ideas, though...
posted by squishy at 5:18 PM on July 24, 2006

Try Textmob.
It's a free service that allows you to send text messages to anybody who is a subscriber to your particular group. Groups can be public or private, although private groups are kind of a pain to organize.
posted by TheCoug at 8:00 PM on July 24, 2006