Ask HN: Google Voice replacements?

10 points by lwhalen 7y ago ↗ HN

Over the last couple of years, I have successfully de-Googled my life:

Search: duckduckgo

Email: Postfix/Spamassassin/Dovecot/etc

Drive/Photos: Nextcloud

Calendar/Contacts: Nextcloud

Play: FDroid store

Hangouts: Mattermost

The one remaining service I just can't shake is Google Voice. I've seen services like jmp.chat do about 60% of what I'm looking for, but I'd really like the whole enchilada if possible. Happy to pay for a commercial service too, if necessary. Self-hosted/Open Source would be ideal, but I'm not too proud to pay a 3rd party if that's what it takes.

The features I'm looking for are:

portable phone number (can move from cellphone to cellphone, ideally by installing an app)

voicemail-to-email transcription

sms-to-email transcription, with the ability to respond to texts via email

mms-to-email delivery (gotta keep up with those cat pics, yo)

group-sms compatibility (it took GVoice _forever_ to implement this, I'm not super comfortable with giving it up again completely)

So, HN Hivemind, is there anything out there that does all the above that isn't Google Voice?

2 comments

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deanmoriarty 7y ago ↗

I have your same requirements, but on top of those I'd also like a service that is as robust as possible against SIM swapping attacks, since, for better or worse, the vast majority of the financial institutions I use only support SMS as 2FA.

I've heard that Google Voice is pretty tough to exploit, since they "lock" the portability of your number by default, and in general contacting Google support is almost impossible compared to the other carriers. For that reason, all my 2FA currently go through my GV number.

Though I also read that some advanced attackers have gone as far as faking porting documents to make the ported-to operator "steal" (unfortunately I don't know the right technical terms here) the number from the ported-from one, regardless of the locking, but I don't know if this would apply to GV as well.

feistypharit 7y ago ↗

You might try burnerapp. It does a lot of what you want, but it's $4.99/mo or $3.99/mo paid annually.