We would like to have a “vanity” toll free number for our business. I want it to be an 800, 866, or 877 number that ends GET HAPPY or BE HAPPY. I need the plan to have a monthly fee below $30/month with no additional per minute charges. The plan most likely will include around 500 free minutes included.

Can you help us with this?

Regards,
Navin

I can help you with the number. That’s what we do. We’re kind of like the GoDaddy of the phone number business. If you get a domain name from GoDaddy, you can take it to any hosting company for the ongoing service, and if you get a toll free number from us, you can take it to any phone company for the ongoing service too. The cost per minute will vary depending on what phone company you take it to, but the cheapest ones go down to bout 3 cents per minute. We really focus on helping you find a better number because as a marketer I know that getting a good number makes much more difference to the success or failure of your business than the slight if any cost per minute difference from one phone company to another.

Regarding flat rate plan or an unlimited plan, I think you should read http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/blogs/guide/unlimited-toll-free-service.html Unlimited plans are almost always scam and you should never pay for toll free minutes in buckets as you’re describing because, 1. most people starting out have no track record and way over estimate the number of calls they with receive and the expense, 2, you almost always wind up paying for minutes you don’t use, and 3, they are usually just starting out and they take time of ramp up, so you will probably pay for several months like that before things ultimately get going full speed.

500 minutes at 3 cents per minute would be $15. The average for one of the companies we work a lot with is actually $12 per month for stand alone toll free service. You might be able to find someone that will charge you thirty something a month for that but it would be stupid to do. Paying by the minute for what you actually use is much smarter. It means you will pay half as much when you get up to 500 minutes and you’ll pay much less in the beginning while you’re getting things rolling.

It’s OK to include the first 100 minutes instead of having a monthly fee. But there is certainly no reputable company offering buckets of minutes other than enough to cover the couple dollar monthly fee.

Bill Quimby
1-800 MARKETER

*** This comment was moved from another post, because of the relevance to this topic.

Erika Hinson

*** This comment was moved to this post where it was more relevant. I don’t want this comment to look redundent because it was relocated. ***

That’s how toll free numbers work, forwarding calls to your local number, except that you don’t get unlimited incoming toll free calls. Even if you have a toll free number and transfer it to a company that gives you a plan for unlimited out bound calls or LD. That does NOT mean you get unlimited toll free calls. Sometimes they are very confusing and misleading because they may say you get unlimited incoming calls for free. That means you can have people call your local number all day long at no cost, which is kind of stupid since all land lines basically have that. But anyway there are no unlimited incoming toll free plans.

There are a couple scam companies that pretend to offer unlimited or flat rate toll free service but they are all designed to attract people that are new to toll free and don’t realize how little toll free service they are going to use. You can tell that this isn’t real because they don’t let you transfer numbers in or out, they are very small companies you’ve never heard of before and no major company ever offers this, because it’s not unlimited. Because careful when you think you’re getting something for nothing because they’ve set up their system to look like you’re getting something for nothing, but they’re not stupid and if you do use more than you pay for you’ll certainly find out that they are in control and they’ll make sure you can’t do that again.

.Bill Quimby.