A separate business number on your cell: the real options, free and paid

Your phone rings as it always has. When you don’t pick up, your carrier’s no-answer forwarding sends the call to a business line, which can play a greeting, take a voicemail and text the caller back from a local business number. The code differs by carrier; here is each one, from the carrier’s own page.

You get a business number for texting, so customer conversations sit in a business inbox apart from family texts, and you can start a text to a customer yourself (a quote, an arrival time, a review request). Calls to that number can be forwarded to your cell. Jobber’s dedicated number works this way, for example: its help center says the number is “meant for text messages only” and calls to it forward to the phone number in your company settings, if you list one.

The trade-off: customers now have two numbers for you. Put the business number on your estimates, invoices and truck, and texts will move there over time.

Calls and texts both run through an app on a business number, so your personal number never reaches a customer. The number can be new, or the number customers already know, ported in. Business phone apps sell this per user per month; see the tools compared page for listed prices.

Texts sent by a business through a service from a regular 10-digit number go through A2P 10DLC registration. In Twilio’s words, it is “the standard that United States telecom carriers have put in place to ensure that SMS traffic to US end users through long code phone numbers is verified and consensual.” Two things are registered: the brand (who is sending) and the campaign (how people opt in, opt out and get help).

Twilio says registered traffic gets less message filtering and higher throughput, and that senders who don’t register pay additional carrier fees. Registration has a fee: Quo and Grasshopper each list $19.50 one-time on their pricing pages. Whoever provides your business texting should handle it, but it registers your business, so the details have to match. What the STOP and consent rules expect.

The FCC says that if you switch providers and stay in the same geographic area, you can keep your number, and porting “can be done between wireline, IP and wireless providers.” From the same page:

• Don’t cancel your old service before the new company starts the port.
• Once you request service from the new company, the old one “cannot refuse to port your number, even if you owe money.” Fees and balances you owe still apply.
• Simple ports must be processed in one business day; wireline to wireless can take a few days.
• Companies may charge a porting fee; the FCC suggests asking whether it can be waived.