Hello. This thread probably belongs in tech talk but let’s be honest, does anybody go there? I don’t know. I guess I could click over there and see for myself but I’m not going to.

I am looking for an app or service that allows me to create a phone number and then receive text messages (or calls, but mostly texts) from customers. That part seems relatively easy. But in addition to that, and this seems to be the difficult part, I would like for multiple employees to be able to receive that text message. Google voice seems to offer this service but when I try to sign up, I am required to have a Google Suite account. And then Google Suite needs access to my company website, email, etc and all of that is totally unnecessary for what I’m trying to do. The google suite/voice thing seems like a headache for what I’m trying to do. I don’t need anything in Google Suite except for the business version of google voice.

The best thing I’ve found that seems to fit my needs is HeyMarket. And it seems a bit pricey (like $35/month) and limits me to 500 messages/month. This seems like a relatively simple thing I’m looking for but am having trouble finding it.

TLDR, I found maybe 2 things that will fit my needs but one is more expensive and the other seems kinda annoyingly confusing.

Maybe you can help me! Or maybe not! But thanks for clicking this thread. Be sure to wash your hands afterwards.

3/25/2020 3:18:04 PM

Im not gonna post it, but this is very dangerous for me chit chat since it seems like a perfect target for an outside sales post

So I can't help with your problem but I'll help by NOT posting that

I do assume this is for your strawberry sales force, since I now imagine that is your whole life

[Edited on March 25, 2020 at 3:43 PM. Reason : E]

3/25/2020 3:43:17 PM

DO IT U STILL GOT TIME

3/25/2020 3:57:07 PM

Man, I almost didn’t post in chit chat because this seems like a shitty attempt at an Outside Sales meme. But i figured I had a better chance at response in chit chat, so here we are.

And yes, this is my attempt at trying some new sales procedures for the farm in response to covid-19.

So if you would like to give me and my business lots of money, you will help me find a practical solution that fits all my business’s growing needs!

3/25/2020 4:02:18 PM

If you used Google Voice, you could just set up a forwarding rule in GMail that forwards the message to each of the employees

3/25/2020 4:25:33 PM

Yeah I think google voice has the capability I’m looking for. The process of using it was overwhelming and unnecessary to me. It needed to verify my business domain and verify a couple other things for features that I don’t need or want. so I was hoping I could skip those unnecessary steps. But maybe I’ll just bite the bullet on that. I guess I’m looking for a reverse mass text capability. Instead of sending 1 text to a mass list of customers, I want my customers’ message to a given number to also reach like 4-5 other employees.

3/25/2020 4:51:11 PM

You can choose to have each text message forward to the google voice gmail account. Then in that gmail account's settings, you can have it forward each message to multiple people. you can forward emails to phones as texts by sending them to 9195551212@vtext.com for Verizon cells (but it's the 10 digit phone number), and I believe other carriers have an equivalent domain.

3/25/2020 4:57:39 PM