Virtual Offices
Phone.com Launches Virtual Number Service
Published April 23rd, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
Must be virtual office week on top of so-called ‘green week.’ RingCentral, FreedomVoice and Phone.com are all making a PR push with a central theme: saving money.
For its part, Phone.com just announced a service called Virtual Number. The new service allows customers to choose one primary phone number that will function as the gateway to all of their cell, land line, or VOIP phones. This is great, too, for consolidating area codes. For example, I live in the Ft. Lauderdale area, which has a 954 area code. But my cell phone has a Miami area code of 305. I also have 800 numbers to contend with.
A Phone.com Virtual Number offers a cadre of features that would be helpful for mobile professionals and road warriors. For example, you can transfer an existing phone number to operate as the primary Virtual Number. You can also upload address books from most major e-mail programs and use it to program call routing based on caller-id, to enable click-to-call, call blocking, and many other functions.
“How many phones do you have personally — two, three, more? A regular cell, a PDA, a home phone, a business line or two, some new VOIP gadgets?” asks Ari Rabban, CEO of Phone.com. “We are so pleased to introduce a service that will give you the ability to publish only one phone number, either a new one or one of your own numbers that you can port to Phone.com — and then you decide which of your devices will ring, when they will ring, and also where you will direct the messages.”
Financial savings is built into the Phone.com Virtual Office, Rabban continues, and the best feature in today’s economy is the price. Phone.com plans start at $4.88 a month and run up to $18.88 a month for unlimited minutes. If you refer customers your price will reduce at the rate of one dollar per referral until you are getting your service for free.
“Beyond that we are actually giving our customers monthly credit for each additional referral,” Rabban says. “These credits can be used for extra minutes, upgraded features, and more. It’s a great way to stay connected.”
Drawing on some of the features of its Virtual Office product, Phone.com Virtual Number also includes voicemail, free international calling to popular destinations, fax-sending capabilities, call routing based on a time schedule, call recording, caller-id routing, SMS voicemail notification, email delivery of voicemail as a .wav file, and much more. Voicemail transcription is also available for a small additional fee, as are other upgrades.
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Bill Brookshire April 24th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Looks like some healthy competition in the virtual office/800 number landscape these days. I like it. We’re seeing a lot of innovation among the three companies you mentioned, as well as pricing incentives. This is the right response to the current economy and the growing competition. Phone.com has the advantage with global numbers, though, in my opinion.
Marcus Hester April 24th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Phone.com definitely has the global phone number advantage. I don’t think FreedomVoice and RingCentral have focused as much on those area. So if you want a virtual office set up in London or Brussels and want to work with an American virtual phone provider, I think Phone.com is the way to go.
Elizabeth Sanchez April 24th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I agree that this is a valuable service, like its competitors. But don’t let the $4.88 a month starting price fool you. You end up getting charged about twice that even if you don’t use it. Virtual phone number companies are extremely vital to many small business owners, but there are often hidden costs.
John April 24th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I think the Virtual Number service can end up being free from Phone.com if you refer friends. $1 per month credit from each friend that signs up, and if you sign up more than 4 then you earn credits for other services. Neat!
Some reports on Phone.com Virtual Number | Phone.com April 26th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
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Melanie Jones April 27th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Um… Yeah, I suppose a virtual number could end up being free if you got five of your friends to sign up for Phone.com every month, or had some sort of affiliate banner on your site to refer folks there. But I don’t think that’s really what most people are going to do. Virtual offices technologies are great, but most people, I would think are too busy running their business to spend so much time trying to save five or ten dollars a month on Phone.com.
Maggie Correta April 27th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I agree with Melanie. Phone.com’s offer is really great in the sense that they are providing an opportunity to get a free virtual number, but how many people are seriously going to spend the time to make it a significant issue? I don’t think that’s the point of the release. The point is, you can have one number that condenses all your phone numbers. Now that’s worth it!
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