How Can I Access My VoIP Voicemail?

Q: When I'm away from my home phone, how can I listen to my voicemail with VoIP?

Source: Adam Bermingham via Flickr

A: This is a great question, and the answer shows off one of our favorite VoIP features. Unlike traditional phone service, where you generally must go through your answering machine to listen to your voicemail, with VoIP you get lots of options for checking your messages. Here are four common ways to access your VoIP voicemail:

Over the phone: Using any phone, including your home phone, cell phone, or a phone out and about, you can dial in to hear your VoIP voicemail. (Your provider can give you specific instructions on how to do this.) This method works well at home, at the office, and on vacation when you just need a simple way to check voicemail.

Through the computer: Many VoIP services will allow you to listen to your voicemails online by logging into your account through their website. This way, you can hear your messages from any computer, no matter where you are. This method can also be handy when you want to listen to a specific old message, since it's easier to figure out which one you want quickly by looking at times and dates than by listening back through them over the phone.

In your email: Don't want to bother logging into the site? Often, you can have your VoIP voicemails delivered to your email inbox, either as recordings or as text transcriptions. Then you can read or listen to them at your leisure.

By text message: Most VoIP companies will send you SMS notifications when you have a new voicemail, including the number that called, the length of the message, and the time of the call. Then you can dial in to listen to your message or go check it via one of the other methods. A few services can text you the full transcript of the voicemail, if you'd like.

Looking for a VoIP company? Check out our individual service reviews, the comparison chart, or previous blog posts for more information, or you can leave us a question or comment in the comment fields below.

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