Last year, I reported on several voice-to-text services for voicemail, including SpinVox, CallWave, and SimulSays. The premise behind this type of service is that someone leaves you a voicemail, the voicemail is transcribed into text (either by humans or a computer), and the text is emailed to you or text messaged to your phone. You never have to dial in to voicemail, unless the text is inaccurate. This could be a huge time saver, especially if people that leave you voicemails like to tell their life story before getting to the purpose of their call.

I’ve finally settled on a service that has kept me happy for many months: Line1. They use SpinVox’s high caliber voice to text service, and they also offer a plethora of unified messaging services for mobile professionals who want an easier way to manage multiple voice and/or fax lines. Right now, I’m just using their SpinVox service for my voicemail.

The amount of voicemails you get per month will determine how much the service will cost. For the average user, 25 voicemails plus a dedicated mailbox phone number comes out to $19.95 a month. They have a one-week free trial (which they will often extend to one month) that will let you determine if having a service like this would be valuable. For me, it’s been a huge convenience.