I am looking for lower-cost competitors to Imbot, a service that
allows you to send a text-based e-mail to a recipient that is
converted to a voice message that is transmitted to them over their
telephone.

Please note that I am NOT looking for a service that converts text
e-mail to a voice mail attachment; instead, the text message is
converted to voice, the service dials the recipient's telephone number
and delivers the message (in voice) to them live or on their voice
mail.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 02 Sep 2003 10:30 PDT

Does this meet your requirements?

http://iping.com/email2phone.asp

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Clarification of Question by prpro-ga on 02 Sep 2003 16:03 PDT

Yes, this seems to be exactly what I was seeking; thanks for the quick work!!!

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 02 Sep 2003 16:49 PDT

I am glad my suggestion was suitable. May I post the iPing Email2Phone
site as the official answer to your question?

---

Clarification of Question by prpro-ga on 02 Sep 2003 17:22 PDT

yes, that would be great; thanks!!

This was an interesting search. I'd never heard of IMbot, but it
occurred to me that good search phrases might be "similar to imbot"
and "like imbot". That led me to this Business Week article:

Business Week
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2000/nf00420a.htm

According to the article linked above, a service called MessageBlaster
was offering a service similar to IMbot. Unfortunately, I soon learned
that MessageBlaster is no more. A visit to MessageBlaster.com will
divert you to Envoy Worldwide, none of whose current offerings
resembles MessageBlaster or IMbot.

In case you're curious about the defunct MessageBlaster, here's an
archived copy of the old MessageBlaster site:

Archived.org cache, MessageBlaster.com - 04/04/200
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815052701/www.messageblaster.com/MB/

Even though MessageBlaster proved to be a dead end, its name was
useful. I next tried a Google search using both the search terms
"imbot" and "messageblaster." That brought me to these pages, which
mention iPing as a competitor of both IMbot and MessageBlaster:

Instant Messaging Planet
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/print.php/477781

Charmed.com: Getting the Word Out
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:WIYsDGUdLbMJ:www.charmed.com/people/alexlightman/2000-01-10GettingtheWordOut.pdf+messageblaster+imbot&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8

I went to iping.com, prowled around a bit, and found that the
description of the Email2Phone service sounded like the sort of thing
you're looking for:

iPing: Email2Phone
http://iping.com/email2phone.asp

Search terms used:

"similar to imbot"
"like imbot"
"imbot" + "messageblaster"

I hope this information will be useful. If you have any questions, or
if a link does not function, please request clarification; I'll be
glad to offer further assistance before you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

GREAT creative research strategy!  I am so pleased you found this; I
had been looking for this kind of service for quite a while.  THANK
YOU!!!

Thank you very much for the five-star rating and the generous tip!

~pinkfreud