Can I get a second number for my trades business without a second phone?

What a trade actually needs from a second number

A plumber, an electrician or a general contractor gets called. A customer standing in two inches of water dials a number; they do not compose a message. So the first question is not what it costs, it is whether it rings.

The second question is who answers it. A one-person shop wants the number in their own pocket. A two- or three-van outfit wants whoever is free to pick it up, and wants the job written down somewhere both of them can read next week.

The third is how long you keep it. A work number goes on a van door, a card, an invoice and a business listing. Once it is painted on a vehicle it is not a number you swap out, which rules out anything that ends on its own.

The free and cheap options, first

If you are one person who wants a permanent work line on the phone in your pocket, one of the three below is your answer. Take it. Nothing further down this page beats a Canadian number that costs nothing, rings, and stays yours.

• TextNow. A free Canadian number in an app, paid for with ads. It rings and it texts, and the number stays yours as long as you keep using it.
• Fongo. A free Canadian number carrying calls and texts over data. Same idea and the same trade-off: the call comes over data, and the app has to be signed in on the phone.
• A second line from your carrier. Most Canadian carriers will add one to a phone you already own for a monthly fee. It is an ordinary phone number, which is the point: it rings, it has voicemail, and nothing about it looks unusual to a customer.

Where a business phone system wins outright

Quo (formerly OpenPhone) and Grasshopper sell what a growing trade asks for next: a shared inbox several people work out of, extensions, call menus, voicemail per person, and a record of the job attached to the customer it belongs to. They are priced per user, per month, and they are worth it once you are dispatching work to other people.

That is a straight concession, not a setup. If the words "shared inbox", "extension", "call routing" or "CRM" describe what you are shopping for, buy one of those and stop reading here.

The narrow case a LocalRing Monthly number covers

There is one thing it does that the free apps do not: several people answering one number from their own email, with no shared login, no app on anybody’s phone, and no second handset.

On a Monthly Canadian number, calls ring up to five phones at once. Whoever picks up hears the caller’s number read out before they speak, and every forwarded call, answered or missed, arrives as an email. Monthly includes 300 call minutes.

Texts land in up to five email inboxes. You, your partner and whoever does the books each read them in their own mail, and any of you can answer straight from that inbox; the reply leaves as an ordinary text from the work number, with your email address stripped out. Because it is email, last spring’s job is still in your mailbox, searchable.

The limits, said before you pay. It is receive-first: you can answer anyone who texted you in the last 30 days and you cannot text a customer first, so it does not do appointment reminders, dispatch or cold follow-up. The first reply each customer gets carries a short label you choose, for example "Rivet Plumbing via TheLocalRing. Reply STOP to end." Your replies cannot carry a picture, so you cannot text back a diagram or a quote as an image, and a reply longer than about 1,500 characters is cut short. There is no voicemail. A Canadian number sends texts within Canada only. It will not receive verification codes, so it is no use for registering a business listing or a bank account.

One number per account, and the number is rented rather than owned. It cannot be moved to your own carrier later. Monthly keeps it until you cancel; a pass ends, holds the number for you for seven days, then returns it to a shared pool, which is wrong for anything painted on a van.

Which one fits

• One person, a permanent line, and it has to ring: TextNow, Fongo, or a second line from your carrier.
• Two to five people answering one number from their own email, no app and no shared login: a Monthly number here.
• Dispatching, extensions, call routing, notes per customer: a business phone system such as Quo or Grasshopper.
• Texting customers first, appointment reminders, or photos of the job: none of the above. You need a number that can start a conversation and send a picture.
• A number for a business listing or any account that sends a code: your own mobile number.

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