Do you have a smartphone and are still paying monthly texting to your cell provider? Ever think it was a waste of money being that you also pay for the internet on your phone? Well, it is a total waste of money and Google Voice is the free solution. Google voice is a free service that allows you to choose a new phone number and basically get that number to ring on any phone that you have. You can manage voicemails and texts online or have phone calls transferred to your cell or house phone. It even has a function that will transcribe your voicemails to text. This is especially convenient if you are in a noisy room – just transcribe the message and read it on your phone.
For free texting, I set it up so when people text my Google Voice phone number, it forwards the text to my email which I can then read on my phone. You will have to give people your new phone number to text and disable texting on your current number but I do not think that is such a big deal – especially in the interest of saving $15 a month.
International calling is also pretty cheap. All calls within the US are currently free.
I have Google voice and absolutely love it. I use for my computer repair business. My Google voice number is my business and I have it set to ring to my cell phone and my home phone. I like the ability to customize just about everything with Google voice.
I use Google Voice for my business also! It is a great texting solution and sure beats paying Verizon $15 more per month. Verizon also charges for visual voice mail and Google Voice allows you to see your voicemail and even transcribes it so you can read it while in a meeting! One of the best things Google has done, besides the search engine and Gmail of course!
Has google voice ever failed you? I notice sometimes that my text messages do not go through for a while. This was also an issue with carrier provided text messaging so it might not be google’s fault.
I use google voice for free texting also and love it! So far, between my 2 lines, we saved $360 this year on texting fees. That’s pretty amazing!
Thanks for the comment Bud. That’s amazing that you are able to save that much money on texting using google voice. Google has some pretty good services and google voice is definitely one of them.
I think its great that Google Voice can save the user text message charges. But what about the one sending them to you? If they only have a feature phone and cannot use Google Voice they are going to be charged an out of network text charge I assume. Is this correct?
Carl, I believe you are correct. It makes sense since the google number is not associated with any cell phone carriers. Another thing I noticed is when you are trying to authenticate accounts online and the computer asks for your cell phone number to text you a code, it usually doesn’t work when you give your google voice number. Other than that, I am very happy with the free service.
Hmm it seems like your blog ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to everything. Do you have any points for rookie blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.
Kandice, thank you for your comment! Sorry that your first comment was eaten up. I don’t like when that happens so when writing something long, I’ll try to either save it as a notepad doc or at least copy and paste the comment. Anyway, if you are just starting out, I recommend you keep doing what you are doing and leave legitimate comments on other people’s blogs. This helps to get your name out. What platform are you using for your blog? WordPress is probably one of the most user-friendly and most easy to set up so if you have not tried it out yet, I recommend you do. Thanks again and good luck. Feel free to ask me any questions that come up.
I just discovered google voice about a month ago when my cell phone minutes were maxed out. Now I use it all the time! I love having a second phone number too, which is what I now give out instead of my cell.
Thanks for your comment Mike. I use google voice all the time too. Can’t image how much i’d be spending for all the texting my family does. The free phone number is awesome and I too give that number out all the time. All in all, a great free service from google.