How to get a virtual phone number – Try for free

From baggy jeans to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, some ’90s trends are worth reviving. But clunky, old-school business phone systems? Not so much. With more companies embracing distributed teams, ‌virtual phone numbers have become the go-to solution for flexible communication. 

A virtual phone system uses the internet to handle calls and texts between your customers and your team. It lets you communicate more effectively with your customers compared to traditional mobile phones at a lower cost.

In this post, we’ll go over how virtual phone systems work, how to get a virtual phone number, and why your business may benefit from having one.

What is a virtual phone number?

A virtual phone number is a cloud-based business phone line. It works through your internet connection rather than traditional phone hardware.

You can make and receive business calls and texts on any device — laptop, smartphone, or tablet — without giving out your personal number. Since it’s hosted online, you can use it from any location.

How virtual phone numbers work

Traditional landline phones use physical phone lines, known as Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS lines, connected to your home or office phone number.

Cell phones convert voice signals into radio waves and transmit them through a network of cell towers. They’re a step up from traditional landlines, but they’re limited because each cell phone has an individual SIM card and a dedicated mobile number.  

You don’t have to purchase any secondary hardware or change your phone number to get a virtual phone number. Virtual phone providers operate cloud-based communications platforms. You just need to log into a provider’s platform to communicate with your customers at scale.

Virtual numbers transmit voice and text data over the internet. This method of transmission is called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. Once you dial the number you want to reach, your VoIP provider converts your voice into digital data and sends it to the call recipient instantly.

Since VoIP phones can make calls wherever you have an internet connection, you don’t have to pay for a separate mobile data plan.

💡Related: How to call without a SIM card

Types of virtual phone numbers

With a virtual phone system, you can get any kind of number you need. Here are the types of virtual numbers you can choose from:

• Local US and Canadian numbers: VoIP service providers offer thousands of local numbers in most area codes. This can help you establish a local presence in whatever markets you serve. For example, if your business operates out of San Francisco and has clients in New York, you can get a local area code in San Francisco as well as a New York phone number. 
• Toll-free numbers: Want a classic 800, 877, or 888 toll-free area code to offer nationwide customer support? With virtual toll-free numbers, callers from across the United States and Canada can reach your business without paying long-distance fees.
• Vanity phone numbers: Vanity numbers like 1-800-FLOWERS are great if you’re looking for a number clients will remember. Get a custom vanity prefix that matches your brand. 

All three types of numbers also offer international calling, so you can reach customers anywhere in the world.

How to get a virtual phone number in 3 steps

You can get a virtual phone number for your business in just a few steps: 

Get a virtual phone number in minutes

Try for free

1. Create an account with Quo, formerly OpenPhone.
2. Select your city or area code in the US or Canada to get a local phone number — or choose a toll-free number.

3. After completing the rest of the sign-up process, you can start calling and customizing your phone settings.

Watch below to get a sneak peek of how to set up an account on Quo:

8 powerful advantages of getting a virtual phone number

Still on the fence about virtual phone numbers? Let’s get into the many benefits they have for businesses: 

1. Work from anywhere on any device

Virtual numbers offer more flexibility to your team compared to traditional phone numbers. Regular business phone numbers force team members to come into an office to make phone calls, limiting where they can work. They also don’t sync with your business communications, so your team has to piece together customer requests and ongoing updates. 

In contrast, virtual phones use your existing softphones and computers to make calls and send texts. Your team can make calls wherever they work — from a home office, at a customer location or project site, or on the go — to get work done. Your business communications are synced in real time so everyone on your team can stay aligned. 

Virtual phone numbers are much easier to scale, too. For example, a real estate firm could get new virtual numbers without having to worry about shipping additional desk phones.

2. Prevent missed calls and lost customers

Anyone with shared access to your business phone number can answer incoming calls and messages. This helps prevent customers from falling through the cracks.

With simultaneous ring on a shared phone number, everyone on your team can be notified of an incoming call.

You can also set up a hunt group or specific ring orders for who should receive incoming calls first. This helps callers get what they need more quickly and helps business owners consistently handle high call volumes.

If your team is busy or unavailable, you can set up a 24/7 AI answering service like Sona to handle your calls for you. AI answering services can support you in capturing new leads, answering common questions, and taking down messages for your team to follow up. They offer smarter call answering instead of voicemail.

3. Improve team collaboration

Everyone with shared access to a phone number can access call history, voicemails, and text messages by contact. It provides a comprehensive view of customer interactions so that your team can offer better service. 

Need to delegate tasks? Team members can use internal threads to assign follow-up tasks or collaborate on customer requests in real time. Just tag a teammate next to a customer interaction; your customers won’t see your internal discussions and your team will get the context they need. With inbox viewers, you can check a thread to see if they’ve reviewed it without having to message them directly.

4. Save time texting with SMS automations

Traditional phone service providers offer bare-bones messaging features. With a US business phone number, you can leverage modern features to automate your messaging capabilities and work more efficiently.

You can use:

• Auto-replies: Instantly respond to missed calls and texts with a short message letting contacts know you plan to get back to them soon.
• Scheduled messages: Queue up a message to go to your contact  at a specific time so you’re not going back and forth over text outside business hours.
• Snippets: If you’re tired of answering the same questions over and over, you can create text message templates of common responses for everyone on your team to use.
• AI-generated responses: Typing “/AI” into Quo provides two or three AI-generated suggestions based on your contact’s conversation history.

You can also create custom text automations and deliver SMS messages for a variety of use cases, like appointment confirmations and reminders, review requests, and customer success follow-ups. Connect a virtual phone provider like Quo with 7,000+ apps using Zapier and Make integrations.

5.  Personalize every single conversation

No one likes repeating themselves on the phone, and your customers are no exception. A virtual phone number helps you take better notes on each contact and personalize every call, improving customer relationships.

Modern VoIP platforms offer contact management tools to save contact information with custom properties and contact notes. They also offer AI call tagging systems so you can prioritize customers with more urgent needs. 

Let’s say you have a new business contact looking for pricing information. With a virtual phone number, you can add and update their personal phone number, sales stage, or follow-up date. You can also tag them under a custom property like ‘pricing’ to help you prioritize them in your follow-up process.

6.  Review dozens of calls in minutes

Automating routine tasks like note-taking or reviewing calls is an easy way to help your business be more efficient. With automatic call recording and  AI call summaries and transcripts, you can generate written summaries of all your calls right after they happen.

Quickly review conversations at a glance and use AI-generated action items to create follow-up items.

Managers can use AI call transcripts to read line-by-line interactions faster and offer more personalized coaching to team members.

7. Make data-backed decisions

A virtual phone number can help you capture the insights that matter to your business. You can track the number of calls and texts made, who isn’t using their phone numbers, the amount of time spent on inbound and outbound calls, and more. You may also need audit logs to track when calls are made, as well as data for general record-keeping purposes. 

With Quo, you can track call handle times and unique conversations on a daily or weekly basis. You can also look at busy times during the week, so you know which days require more staff on the phone.

8. Reduce manual work with integrations

Virtual phones integrate with all your tools, including your CRM and project management tools. Regular phones don’t integrate with your tech stack, which means conversations may get siloed and become harder for your team to access.

For fast-growing teams, their CRM is often their single source of truth. But tracking calls and texts as they happen can be tedious administrative work. With the HubSpot, Salesforce, and Jobber virtual phone integrations, your team can automatically log calls and texts in your CRM.

Virtual phone services also have the benefit of integrating with apps like Slack, Gong, email, and productivity tools like Zapier. For teams that need more technical integration functionality, you can use API connections to build custom integrations between your tools. For example, the Quo API helps you connect Quo to a system that may not be available via Zapier or Make.

6 disadvantages of virtual phone numbers

At this point, you might be wondering — are virtual numbers too good to be true? While they come with perks, it’s important to take a balanced look before making a decision. Here are six drawbacks to keep in mind with virtual phone number providers:

1. Hidden fees: Some providers may advertise low rates but include costs for features, toll-free minutes, or international calls. Similarly, you may have limits for text messaging or storage. Look for a provider that has a transparent pricing page. 
2. Difficulty registering: Registering a virtual phone number for SMS messaging or porting over an existing number can be complicated if the provider’s process isn’t user-friendly.
3. Steep learning curve: A poorly designed interface can make it time-consuming to get your team set up and running. It may even deter you from using all the features, such as setting up call flows. 
4. Hard to scale: A provider with limited options may make it difficult to add more numbers or integrate advanced features. Rigid pricing plans could make scaling challenging and expensive.
5. Requires high-bandwidth internet service: Since they run on VoIP technology, virtual numbers require internet access to work. If you’re in a remote location with low bandwidth or have a poor WiFi connection, you might be unable to make calls with your virtual number. Call quality depends on your internet connection. If you have a weak connection, you can make calls, but you won’t be able to have a proper conversation. 
6. No emergency calling: Since virtual numbers aren’t tied to a physical location, many providers don’t support emergency services like 911. If your business has a physical location that needs emergency calling, you may want to have a backup landline number or choose a VoIP provider like Quo that offers E911 support.

5 essential features you should get with a virtual phone number

There are many virtual phone number services to choose from. Free services like Google Voice and paid options like Quo help small businesses get the phone services they need. 

When researching virtual phone services, make sure they offer the following six features:

1. Shared phone numbers and inboxes

Shared numbers and inboxes are the single biggest reason to sign up for a virtual phone number. Shared numbers allow teams to split responsibility for incoming calls and texts so that they can cut down on missed calls and reduce customer response times.

A shared team inbox lets you see all your calls, texts, voicemails, and recordings in one place. This helps you keep track of customer relationships and know which team members are communicating with your customers. 

2. Customizable call flows

Your virtual phone provider should make it easier to manage your incoming calls. The right provider offers call management capabilities and an easy way to set up and manage your call flows. 

Some important call management features you should look for are:

• Ring groups to customize how your team receives incoming calls, either all at once or in custom ring batches
• Phone menus to give your customers a self-serve auto-attendant option to reach different departments
• Business hours call routing to create multiple call flows based on time of day

Bring all these features together in a visual call flow builder that helps you map out your call flows with ease. For example, Quo’s call flow builder gives you a visual canvas. You can drag and drop each call flow step so that you have complete control over your incoming calls.

3. Support for SMS and MMS

Many businesses use SMS as a customer communication channel. While it hasn’t replaced email and phone calls as the go-to support channel, it is worth noting the incremental increases in SMS support every year. 

Most traditional desk phones don’t support texting at all, making it harder to meet customers where they are. With a virtual SMS phone number, you can text your customers and clients to support them however they need it.

4. Call recording and transcriptions

Need to record calls to make sure your team is providing a great experience? Or to have a clear communication trail in case a dispute comes up? With a virtual phone number, you can record customer calls, sales calls, and more with just one click. Then, quickly review them with call summaries and transcriptions. 

Some phone systems even allow for the automatic recording of all calls. The benefits of call recording include:

• Training sales reps or customer support agents
• Recording customer discovery calls to improve your products, apps, or services
• Keeping records of client meetings to give updates and address concerns if there’s miscommunication 

Call recording is important for the overall health of your business because you can use the recordings to find out what’s working and what can be improved. Just make sure you’re legally recording phone calls.

5. Call forwarding during and after business hours

Managing customer expectations is simple with configurable call forwarding and voicemail settings. Let’s say you want to forward calls outside business hours to avoid missed calls. You can easily do this through your virtual number provider’s call flow settings. Just input your business hours, enable call forwarding, and choose the destination for calls — whether that’s a voicemail, a team member, or a third-party answering service.

Virtual vs traditional phone numbers

Now that you know the advantages and limitations of virtual phone numbers, how do they stack up to regular numbers? Here’s a short breakdown to see how VoIP phones outperform traditional phones:

Feature	Virtual Phones (VoIP)	Traditional Phones (Landline)
Setup and hardware	No physical installation needed; works on existing devices, including computers, smartphones, and tablets	Requires professional installation of copper wires, phone jacks, and dedicated desk phones
Cost structure	$15-40 per user per month with minimal upfront costs; cheaper long-distance rates	$20-50 per line per month, plus high upfront hardware costs of around $200 or more; expensive long-distance calls
Mobility and flexibility	Work from anywhere with an internet connection; switch devices seamlessly	Fixed to a physical office location; requires call forwarding for remote access
Business features	Advanced features, including auto-attendants, shared numbers, SMS/MMS, call analytics, and CRM integrations	Basic features only: calling, voicemail, and simple call forwarding
Reliability	Depends on internet connection quality; may experience disruptions during outages	Works during power outages; dedicated lines provide a consistent connection
Scalability	Add/remove users instantly with a few clicks; flexible plans that grow with a business	Requires new hardware and installation for each additional user; difficult to scale
Team collaboration	Shared phone numbers allow multiple team members to manage calls/texts; built-in team messaging	Limited sharing capabilities; each phone typically has its own extension

How much does a virtual number cost? 

With many small businesses and startups embracing remote work, virtual phone numbers can help you save money while providing the business features you need.

The numbers don’t lie: Smaller businesses can save thousands of dollars on business phone system costs with virtual phone systems over traditional phone services. Virtual phone subscriptions typically cost $15-$50 per user per month, while on-premises PBX systems can cost up to $1,000 per user. Plus, you avoid hardware expenses like desk phones, which cost around $150 each.

You can use these savings to invest in more advanced features, like call transfers, AI transcriptions, and analytics and reporting.

As a point of reference, here’s a look at Quo’s pricing:

	Starter	Business	Scale
Starting price	$15 per user per month	$23 per user per month	$35 per user per month
Unlimited calling and messaging	✅	✅	✅
Virtual number	✅ One local or toll-free number per user	✅ One local or toll-free number per user	✅ One local or toll-free number per user
Additional numbers	✅ $5 per extra number per month	✅ $5 per extra number per month	✅ $5 per extra number per month
Number porting	✅ Free local and toll-free number porting	✅ Free local and toll-free number porting	✅ Free local and toll-free number porting
IVR phone menus		✅	✅
AI call transcripts and summaries		✅	✅
AI call tags			✅

Quo: The virtual phone service for modern businesses

Thousands of businesses rely on Quo’s virtual phone service. With Quo, you can make calls around the world to help support your customers, team members, and clients. You can use Quo on your mobile phone with our iOS and Android apps and on your computer with our Mac, PC, and browser apps.

Quo has many required features for business phone systems, including call forwarding, business hours, and caller ID. 

Get started with a free trial of Quo today.

Frequently asked questions about virtual phone numbers