There are many different reasons why people might need a second phone number on their cell phone. Ultimately, it’s probably because you want to categorize your incoming and outgoing calls. Who knows, you could be:
Any or all of these reasons are good to get a second phone number. And, of course, you could get a second SIM card, but this means your phone should either support two SIM cards or you will need to carry around 2 phones… a little inconvenient...
The other way is to get a virtual phone system or VoIP. This is ideal for anyone trying to keep their calls separate.
With cloud technology, you don’t have to put a second sim card on your phone to benefit from a second phone number on your smartphone.
With modern cloud calling or Voice over IP (VoIP), you can call from an app on your smartphone, tablet or laptop just using an internet connection. VoIP providers can often provide you with a second phone number that you can use for both text messaging and calling.
Personal and professional lives are two different things and to have a healthy relationship with work, you shouldn’t mix them. You can start by getting a separate phone number for work as it helps you:
So, what are the best VoIP apps for personal use? Let’s find out.
You can use a Google Voice number for your personal calls, texts and voicemails. The numbers can be used to make international as well as domestic calls from your web browsers or mobile devices.
In addition to international calls and texts, Google Voice for personal use comes with voicemail transcription and group messaging options along with searchable backups.
Since the service is free, users say it doesn't have many premium features, such as emergency calling or number porting for example.
You can download the Viber app on your mobile, laptop or computer, choose a plan and start calling or messaging anyone around the globe.
Viber lets you make voice and video calls, send and receive texts as well as multi-media files. Using the app, you can also record calls, join communities and send group chats. Editing or deleting seen messages and setting a self-destruct timer for texts is also possible with the app.
Viber offers 3 plans for the US consumers such as Call anywhere, Call USA and Call World. Call anywhere plan starts from $9.99 while their popular plans offer unlimited minutes for $1.99. Know more about their plans from here.
The above-mentioned plans don't include premium and non-geographic numbers. Compared to other platforms, their call quality is reportedly poor.
With Sideline, you can get a second phone number that can be used for texts, calls and voicemails without adding another sim to your phone.
The Sideline features include auto-reply, web texting, number porting, ring & text tones and detection of spam or telemarketer calls.
Sideline offers 3 paid plans – Monthly Plan, 6 Month Plan and 12 Month Plan. The price starts from $9.99 per month.
Though most users are happy with the call quality, they feel that the service is a bit overpriced for the features offered.
Burner, as the name suggests, is all about keeping your personal number private by making use of a temporary phone number for outgoing and incoming calls.
Burner comes with features such as call and text notifications, inbound caller id, burn a number, in app calling, PIN lock and auto-reply to texts.
Burner has monthly and yearly plans. The monthly plan for a one-line subscription starts from $4.99.
The app helps you maintain privacy and anonymity at a reasonable rate. However, their services are limited to the USA and Canada and don’t support international roaming.
Hushed is all about getting a second phone number without carrying a second phone. You can access your number using WiFi or mobile data anywhere anytime.
The app lets you keep multiple numbers on one app. The features also include call routing, call forwarding, auto-reply. You can also use the app on multiple devices.
They have a prepaid plan starting from $1.99, their unlimited plan is priced at $3.99 and you can avail The Pay As You Go plan at $4.99.
Users have reported connectivity issues. If you are using the number on international roaming, the additional data cost might make the plans expensive.
TextFree is all about free unlimited texting. You can also make calls by choosing their minute-based plans.
TextFree allows you to choose custom phone numbers and offers unlimited free texting. They also offer paid calling and voicemail.
TextFree lets you buy calling minutes starting from $1.99 per 100 minutes. To buy 1000 minutes of calling, you will have to pay $18.99.
Compared to other VoIP service providers, TextFree lacks in features. They do not offer number porting. The free version is also loaded with an annoying number of ads.
TextMe offers free unlimited calls and texting services across USA and Canada among other countries. The app also offers multimedia file support.
With TextMe, you can use multiple phone numbers and the app is accessible from various devices such as phones, tablets and laptops. The app also supports voice mail.
TextMe doesn’t offer premium services. At the moment, they offer free calling and texting facilities.
Users have reported that the app crashes quite often and doesn't offer an emergency calling option.
With the Second Phone Number app, you can call around 25 countries without adding another sim to your phone or carrying a second phone around.
Some of the features include Forward calls, SMS and MMS support, contact management facility and international calls.
Downloading the app is free, but certain features and services are paid for in the app.
Additional charges are added to your bill once you cross a certain number of SMS per month making the subscribers pay more than their monthly subscription charges.
VoIP apps can change the way small and medium businesses as well enterprises function. By facilitating conference calls with unlimited users, most of the VoIP apps help companies ensure a smooth flow of information between departments that are spread across the globe at a reasonable rate.
Quicktalk is the easy way for small and medium sized businesses to bring professionalism to their business calling. With a wide range of features, simplified in one single app, businesses can treat their incoming and outgoing calls easier than ever.
Quicktalk lets you select your phone number and includes features like custom greetings, call redirections, call logs and analytics, and much more.
For the quality and range of features offered by Quicktalk, their pricing is unbeatable. For $19 a month, users have everything they need to manage their business.
Quicktalk has excellent reviews in terms of service connection. Users also share the professional image that Quicktalk brings to their business.
When you choose Google Voice for business, you can get a phone number with a local area code. Let’s see if Google Voice is enough to transform your business.
Google Voice comes with some smart features such as SMS, option to convert Voicemail-to-text, call forwarding, advance reporting and conference calls with 10 or more participants.
Google Voice for business has 3 plans. The Starter plan is priced at $10 for up to 10 users. The Standard and Premier plans are priced at $20 and $30 respectively and the number of users and domestic locations are unlimited.
Though Google Voice seems like an efficient solution, it has a few drawbacks. For instance, calling international locations are only available for users who have subscribed to their Premier plans.
Sideline for business is the best way to separate your personal and professional phone numbers and organize your business contacts.
You can choose a memorable local phone number based on your area code. The features include texting, voicemails, calling, number porting and caller id.
Though their plans are cost-effective, many users have reported frequent call drops and poor call quality.
From enterprises to start-ups, Ringcentral has VoIP solutions for all kinds and sizes of businesses. Their solution can be used to bring your global as well as the domestic audience together.
Ringcentral has features such as business SMS, option to convert voicemails to text, team messaging and document sharing. Some of their plans also have automatic call recording as well as real-time analytics.
They have 4 different plans and the basic one is priced at per $22.49 per month. Their Ultimate plan is priced at $59.99 per user for a month. The Basic plan doesn’t include video call.
Though their services and plans are feature rich, it can be a bit expensive as you need to pay additional charges if you need to get a basic feature like video call.
With Grasshopper virtual phone numbers, you can look more professional and easily do business from anywhere. You can also get a toll-free number for your business.
Grasshopper offers number porting facility, call forwarding, voicemail transcription, a virtual receptionist and customized greetings.
The starting price of Grasshopper is $29 per month with no engagement. You can choose their ad-on features such as Ruby Receptionist, Call Blasting or Voice Studio at additional costs.
Grasshoper’s plans and services may be ideal for start-ups. However, if you are a business that is growing, you may need to consider other service providers that offer more features suited for growing organizations.
It’s easy to get awed by a long list of features. When you see the list, it sounds great to be able to customize the music your clients hear when they’re put on hold. But, is it really that important?
Do you think your client is going to be happier just because they heard the latest pop song instead of elevator music?
Here are 5 features that are critical when choosing a VoIP plan for a second phone number.
Today, you may think you need to make just 10-15 calls in the day so a plan with 1000 free calls per month sounds more than enough. But, what happens when your team grows and you can take on 5 more calling agents?
Your per day calls jump from 15 to 60. And those 1000 free calls you thought were more than enough are used in half the month.
Every call from there on is billed. What you thought was an affordable plan may end up becoming quite expensive when you see the bill.
So, don’t put a limit on how many calls you think you’ll make in a month. Look for plans with unlimited calls at a fixed monthly price. Make sure the plans are inclusive of not just unlimited minutes but also tolls and surcharges. With this assurance, you can let your calling agents focus on serving your customers and closing deals rather than tracking their call time.
A friend of mine has a small boutique hotel for which he wanted a second phone number. There’s no scarcity of hotels in the city so he needed a way to make sure the customers felt special every time they spoke to him. That’s when we figured out the advantages of having a VoIP plan with custom greetings.
A custom greeting lets you personalize the experience from their first call. You can use the time your customer is waiting for his call to be redirected to introduce your business, talk about promotion and so on.
You’ve heard that line,” when it rains it pours…” There’ll be days when all your customers decide to call at the same time. So, who do you prioritize?
A VoIP plan with automatic call distribution is the ideal solution. What this does is automatically route calls to an individual who is available at the time. It can also be used to direct calls to the relevant department.
Let’s say you’re managing an e-commerce website. For a general query, the call can be directed to any of your call service agents. But, if there’s something specific a customer needs to know from say the billing department, they can choose an appropriate option from the welcome menu and their call can be redirected to a person who would be able to help them. It’s an easy way to reduce wait time on calls and keep your customers happier.
If you have a team of people making and receiving phone calls, you can’t keep track manually of how many calls they handle every day. Excel sheets take time to create and there’s always a chance someone will forget to enter a call or enter false data.
Look for a VoIP plan that maintains call statistics for you. These call statistics are much more detailed than what you might be able to maintain on your own. You can find out how many calls are made, how long each call lasts, where your callers are from, etc. You can check out statistics by day, week or month.
This information isn’t just a bunch of numbers. You can use them to improve the way calls are handled and eventually increase lead conversions.
For example, if you see a large number of calls from a particular area and you don’t have a store there, maybe it’s time you think about opening a new branch. Or let’s say you find too many calls going unanswered. Each of these calls is lost revenue so you may need to expand your team.
Let’s imagine that you’ve got a person on your team who manages to convert every lead into a sale. If you want everyone else on your team to learn from them, you’ve got to be able to make the team listen in to the calls.
And VoIP call recording is an easy way to record 2-way phone conversations. You get to hear not just what your representative says but also how the customer responds. The recording can be shared and used for training modules.
Recording calls is also a foolproof way of making sure details of a discussion are captured correctly. Of course, you must ensure that your customers are aware that they are being recorded.
Compared to adding another SIM card, getting a VoIP app actually has a lot of added benefits that you can’t get with traditional cellular services. Here’s to name a few:
VoIP plans are usually cheaper than cellular connections. Since calls are made over the internet, you are charged mainly for internet usage. Many add-on features such as custom greetings, call recording, etc are included in the base cost. With traditional phone systems, these features can add up to become quite expensive. Also, VoIP calls require no additional infrastructure.
When calls are placed over the internet, the sound quality is much higher. There’s no worry about muffled audio and you can enjoy a conversation with someone halfway across the globe as though they were sitting next to you. Of course, this depends on the quality of your internet connection.
When you’re running a business, you need to be accessible at all times. If you have international clients, balancing time zones can get challenging. A client in Japan may have a question at 6 pm on a Monday but for you, in Washington, this would be 4 in the morning! When you get a business VoIP plan, even though you may be unable to take the call, you can receive and record a voice message.
Getting a VoIP plan offers many more features than just the ability to make and receive calls. You can customize call distribution settings, set custom greetings, record and analyze calls and more. The data extracted from call analysis can help you make more informed decisions for your future.
Getting a phone number dedicated to your business somehow makes it feel more legit. It builds a professional look, inspires confidence and can be just what’s needed to increase your conversion rate. With the VoIP option, you get a lot more – you get an easy way to distribute calls, collect and analyze call statistics, and it’s more cost-effective too! Give it a try and experience the benefits first hand.
Paul is a tech and business phone system enthusiast always open to discuss ideas. If you’re interested in collaborating on content projects or getting a product listed on our blog, don’t hesitate and reach out to us: [email protected].
