Virtual phone number for business: how it works

A virtual phone number for business is a real, dialable number that isn't attached to a physical line, a SIM card, or a building. It lives in software, rings wherever you tell it to, and moves with you.

That sounds like a technicality. In practice it changes what a small business can do — because the number stops being a thing you are tethered to and becomes a thing you configure.

What a virtual phone number actually is

A traditional business number was a property of a wire. It arrived at a specific address, terminated in specific hardware, and moving it meant an engineer.

A virtual number is a property of an account. Calls to it are routed over the internet to whatever device you have nominated — your mobile, a laptop, a colleague's phone, or several at once. Change the destination in a settings page and the next call goes somewhere else.

The number itself is ordinary. Customers dial it the way they dial anything. Nothing about it signals that it is virtual.

What it lets you do

Run the business from anywhere

The original reason most people look for one. Your business number reaches you at the workshop, at home, or in another country, without forwarding charges and without telling anyone your number has changed.

For anyone who travels, this is the whole argument. Your customers keep calling one number; where you happen to be is your business.

Choose where you appear to be

Virtual numbers can usually be bought in whatever area code you want. If your customers are in one city and you are in another, a local number gets answered more often than one that looks out of town — and local numbers get called back more often than they get ignored.

Businesses working across several regions often run a number per region, all ringing the same phone.

Hand it over

Because the number is an account setting rather than a SIM, it can be transferred. Hire someone and the line goes with the role. Go on holiday and it rings a colleague. Sell the business and the number sells with it.

A personal mobile number cannot do any of that, which is how people end up taking business calls years after they left.

Separate work from life, properly

A virtual number on the phone you already carry means you can silence work at six without silencing your family, and know before you answer which one is calling.

Scale without hardware

Adding a line is a change in an admin panel. There is no cabling, no handset to buy, no engineer visit — which matters most for the kind of business that grows in steps of one person.

What it costs

Dramatically less than a traditional business line. A virtual number is typically a few dollars a week with calling included, against line rental plus per-minute charges on the old model.

The gap widens with each line. Five traditional lines means five rentals and the equipment to terminate them; five virtual numbers is a number in a field.

What to check before you buy

• Does it handle SMS, including pictures? A lot of business happens over text, and plenty of cheap services are voice-only or cannot receive images — which matters the first time a customer photographs the broken thing.
• Will banks and services text it? Some verification systems refuse app-based numbers. Test this before you make it your main line.
• Can you port the number out? If you build a business on a number, you want the right to take it elsewhere. Check on day one, not when you want to leave.
• What happens if payment lapses? Some providers recycle numbers quickly. For a number printed on a van, that is a serious risk.
• Is the area code you want available? Confirm before signing up, not after.
• How are call records handled? Worth knowing how long they are kept, particularly for confidential work.

Where it falls short

Being straight about this matters.

It depends on a connection. No internet or mobile data means no calls. A traditional line drew power from the exchange and worked in an outage; a virtual number does not.

Emergency calling is more complicated. A virtual number has no fixed address, so emergency services cannot locate you from it the way they can from a landline. Providers handle this with a registered address, which is only correct if someone keeps it updated.

Some systems won't accept it. Occasionally a bank, a government form or a verification service refuses numbers it identifies as virtual.

Is it right for you?

If you are running a business from a personal mobile, almost certainly — it is one of the cheapest problems you will ever solve, and the boundary alone is usually worth the money.

If you need a phone that works in a power cut, or you are tied to premises with alarm or lift lines on the old network, a traditional line still has a job to do.

For most small businesses, and for anyone who works anywhere other than one desk, the virtual number is simply the better tool.