It happens at dinner. Your personal phone rings, the screen shows a number you half-recognize, and you answer a client’s question about tomorrow’s delivery with your mouth full, in front of your family, on a number that is now saved in that client’s phone forever — including the version of you that will want a holiday next year. A separate business number is the cheapest boundary in all of small business. So what is the cheapest way to get one? The short answer: free, today, in about ten minutes. The fuller answer — because free and right are not always the same tier — is below.
The short answer: start at $0 with Google Voice
Google Voice gives you a real business number for $0, and for a solopreneur starting out it is genuinely good, not merely cheap. You pick a number in your area code, calls ring through to your existing phone via the app, voicemails arrive transcribed, and you can screen calls and set business hours after which the phone simply does not ring — the feature that pays for tiers above this one, delivered free. Setup takes about ten minutes, your personal number stays private, and customers see a professional face from day one. If your business is you, a phone and a service area, you can run on this for a long while.
Know its edges, though. It is built for one person: no real team inbox where two people share the same number, no auto-attendant directing callers, limited integrations with the tools a growing business adopts. Those absences are exactly what the next tier sells.
The $10 to $20 tier: where growing businesses land
When a second person needs to answer the business line, or callers deserve a “press 1 for sales,” you have arrived at the VoIP apps. OpenPhone, at $15 per user per month, is the modern favorite at this level: unlimited calling and texting in the US and Canada, a shared team inbox so anyone can pick up a conversation, an auto-attendant, voicemail transcription, and integrations with tools like HubSpot and Slack. Dialpad, at $25 per user, adds AI call transcription and analytics on top — genuinely useful if calls are your sales floor and you review them. Grasshopper, at $14 a month, is the old reliable for a solopreneur who wants the professional front — greetings, extensions, a toll-free option — without team features.
What you are buying in this tier is not the number. The number costs nothing. You are buying shared access, a recorded professional greeting, and a system where the business keeps the number when a staff member leaves — instead of your best salesperson’s personal mobile becoming, by slow accident, the company switchboard.
The carrier route: $30 to $60, and the one case for it
The phone carriers will happily sell you a business line at $30 to $60 per month per line. In almost every comparison this is the expensive way to buy what an app does better for $15. It makes sense in essentially one scenario: when the business needs a separate physical phone on a separate device — a field crew handset, a counter phone that lives at the shop, anyone whose work cannot run through a personal device — or where the business depends on carrier-grade priority and coverage in places apps struggle. If none of that describes you, the carrier line is a legacy habit with a modern price.
Local or toll-free? The number itself is a decision
Two number choices shape how customers read you. A local area code converts better for a local business — neighbors answer neighbors, and a familiar code quietly says “we are from here.” A toll-free number, typically a $5 to $15 monthly add-on through most VoIP providers, still signals “established company” to many customers, especially over forty, and suits businesses selling regionally or nationally. Many settled businesses eventually run both: local on the shopfront and the Google listing, toll-free on the website and the van. Neither choice is expensive; both are marketing decisions disguised as phone decisions.
The features that actually separate the tiers
Providers list forty features; five decide which tier you belong in. Business-hours routing — calls handled one way at 2 p.m. and another at 2 a.m. — exists even in the free tier and is the first thing to configure. The shared inbox is the true dividing line between solo tools and team tools: the moment two people serve the same customers, a number that lives on one person’s phone becomes a bottleneck and a risk. Call recording matters for training and for trades where “you promised Tuesday” disputes happen — check it is offered and legal in your state, since a few states require both parties to consent. An auto-attendant (“press 1 for…”) is polish more than necessity under about ten calls a day, and a credibility feature above it. And integrations — the call log landing inside your customer records automatically — are what you are really paying Dialpad-tier prices for. Score your business against those five honestly and the tier picks itself; everything else on the feature page is decoration.
Set it up in the right order
However you choose, the sequence that avoids pain is the same. Pick the number first and resist printing anything until it rings. Record the greeting and set the business hours before the number goes public, so the very first caller meets the finished system. Make a test call from a friend’s phone and listen to the experience as a customer — the menu length, the hold music, where a voicemail actually lands. Then update the listings in order of value: Google profile, website, invoices, vehicle, in that sequence, because the Google listing is where the next customer will actually find you. Only then let the personal number start its quiet retirement to being what it always should have been: yours.
Porting, voicemail and the professionalism details
Three practical notes separate a smooth setup from an annoying one. First, porting: you can bring an existing number into most of these services, and it takes roughly three to ten days. Do not cancel the old service during the move — the number must be active to travel, and canceling first is how businesses lose numbers they have printed on everything. Second, voicemail: record a professional greeting on day one, in your own voice, saying the business name, hours and when you return calls. It takes ninety seconds and it is the difference between a business that missed a call and a business that handled one. Third, separation hygiene: keep business calls, texts and voicemail inside the app from the start, so a personal phone upgrade never strands your call history, and so the number stays an asset of the business — listed on your profiles, your invoices, your vehicle — rather than a tenant of your pocket.
That hygiene scales, too. The stack of small systems a business assembles as it grows — shared inboxes, shared files, shared passwords — is the same thinking behind the best free tools for managing a remote team, where the team layer is also free until it genuinely needs to not be.
Questions owners ask before switching
Will customers take a VoIP number seriously? They will never know. A number is a number; what customers judge is whether it is answered professionally, rings during the hours you promised, and carries a greeting with your business name on it.
Can I text customers from these numbers? Yes — business texting is built into the apps at every tier in this article, and for appointment reminders and quick updates it is often the channel customers answer fastest. Register the number properly through the app if it asks; that step keeps your texts out of spam filters.
What if I already gave everyone my personal number? Port it or forward it, put the new number on everything current, and let the transition happen over a season. The dinner-table calls stop faster than you expect once the business number is the one on your listing, your invoices and your van.
Do I keep the number if I switch providers or sell the business? With the app-based services, yes — numbers port between providers as a matter of routine, and a number held by the business is an asset that transfers with it, which is one more reason it should never live on an employee’s personal account, where leaving takes the number (and its callers) with it.
The bottom line
Start free with Google Voice if you are solo. Move to the $15 tier the week a second person needs the line or the greeting matters. Pay carrier prices only for a physical phone doing physical work. The cheapest business number is $0; the right one for most growing businesses is $15; and the most expensive option of all is the one you are using now — your personal number, rented out to your business for free, at the price of every dinner it interrupts. Set the new number up this week, before the next client saves the wrong one.
