Honest questions, honest answers

Less than it sounds, and it's the whole point — running it yourself is why the messages are yours and the numbers can't be taken away. In practice: a $5-a-month cloud server (or a spare computer at home) and one command to install. A built-in checklist tells you in plain English if anything's missing. If you've ever set up a Minecraft server, a smart-home hub or a website, you're overqualified. If that still sounds like more than you fancy, a hosted app like OpenPhone is a perfectly good answer — this one's for people who'd rather own the lot.

US mobile networks block business texts from numbers whose owner hasn't registered — it's their anti-spam rule, and it applies to everyone. You register in your own name, on your own carrier account, because you're the one sending. We're not a messaging company and never send anything for you, so there's no shared registration to hide under. The admin page gives you the exact wording for every box on the forms. With an EIN (free from the IRS, about ten minutes, no company required) one sign-up covers all your numbers. Without one there's a limited option for individuals, or you can skip it entirely and use the number for calls only. Approval is up to the networks and usually takes a few days, so start it early.

It isn't free, and it isn't ours. At Telnyx's published rates it's $4.50 to register your company, $15 to have the campaign reviewed, and $1.50 a month after that on the tier this system uses (the first three months are billed up front). All of it goes to Telnyx, who state they add no markup and pass these through at the registry's cost. Every provider's customers pay the same fees — RingCentral passes them through at cost too, so this is one place nobody has an advantage. Re-check the amounts when you sign up — the registry sets them and they move.

Because the rule isn't about volume or tone — it's about how the message is sent. A person typing to another person from a consumer service is person-to-person traffic, which is what ordinary phone numbers were always for and what Google Voice is classified as. Anything sent through a messaging API or a platform is application-to-person, and that's the category the registration was invented to police. Google runs the whole service themselves and keeps it on the personal side of that line by policing behaviour instead: group texts cap at eight people, bulk sending is against the rules, and traffic that starts to look automated gets quietly filtered.

We're on the other side of the line, and so is every business texting product — RingCentral, OpenPhone, all of them. Your messages leave through a carrier API, so they're application-to-person whether a human typed them or not. That's the honest trade: Google Voice's texting is free and ours isn't, but ours is registered. Registered traffic is the traffic the networks have agreed to carry for a business, and when something goes wrong there's a brand and a campaign behind it rather than a filter you can't appeal. For personal texting, Google wins on price and we'd say so. For a business that needs its texts to actually arrive, $1.50 a month is what that costs.

Yes — including a mobile number you've had for years. One golden rule: never cancel the old line first. Moving the number is what closes the old line, and cancelling first loses the number for good. Our guide covers the whole sequence, including keeping a spare line working during the switch and moving any bank or login codes off the number beforehand.

The numbers stay in your carrier account and the messages stay on your server — neither was ever ours to take. What stops is what you were paying for: the app being woken for new calls and texts, plus updates and support. There's a grace period before anything switches off, and you can export everything whenever you like.

No — and neither does anybody else, so let's not pretend otherwise. In the US a number is held by a carrier; what you have is the regulatory right to move it to a different carrier whenever you want. That right is yours at RingCentral too, and at Google Voice (which charges $3 to unlock a number for porting, or nothing if you brought it in). We'd rather say so than imply the big providers have your number locked in a safe, because they don't: porting away from one of them is usually a form and a wait, handled by the carrier you're moving to.

So what's the real difference? Not ownership — separation. With a bundled provider the phone service and the number are one subscription with one company: stop paying and the service stops, and you have to port out to keep using the number at all. Here they're two companies and two bills. Your numbers live in your own carrier account; we never hold the key to it, and it's a documented rule of the design that your carrier credentials never touch our machines. Cancel us tomorrow and nothing happens to your numbers, because nothing of ours was ever attached to them. That's a smaller claim than "you own your number" — it's also one we can actually stand behind.

Not for you. We can't promise that our prices won't go up… but we guarantee our prices will never go up for you. The rate card in effect the day you subscribe is locked to your account for as long as you stay subscribed — your monthly base and the same per-user rate for any teammates you add down the road. If we raise prices later, that's a problem for new customers, never for you.

It covers what a small business actually uses day to day: opening-hours routing, ringing several people at once so the first to answer takes the call, and everyone's own private number with calls, texts, voicemail and recording.

What it doesn't have, stated plainly rather than left for you to discover: no greeting menu ("press 1 for sales"), and no shared inbox where several people work one number's texts. Both are on the roadmap for a larger-team version; neither has a date, so treat them as absent. And it deliberately isn't call-centre software either: no agent queues, wrap-up timers, wallboards, managed desk phones or built-in video. Running a support floor, or need a phone menu today? Buy RingCentral or 3CX — we'd rather say that than sell you something that doesn't do it. (If you're comparing with 3CX or FreePBX: those are switchboards you administer, with desk phones and queues. This is numbers that belong to people, with texting that works properly and an iPhone app that feels like the built-in one.)

Any internet-based phone line needs your street address registered with the carrier before emergency services can find you — that's about $1/month per number, and the setup checklist reminds you. Whenever your phone has normal mobile signal, the app hands 911 to the phone's own dialler instead, because that route is safer. Don't make an internet line your only way of reaching 911.

Planned, and gated purely by demand — the backend already doesn't care what the phone runs. Join the waitlist and you're literally voting for it; enough votes and it gets built.

Your archive — every message thread, voicemail recording, contact and call record — lives on your server and nowhere else. There's no copy on ours. We run one small piece of plumbing, the bit that wakes your phone when something arrives, and it's deliberately built to know as little as possible: enough to make your phone buzz, never the contents.

We should be straight about the part nobody can avoid, though. Text messages and phone calls travel over a carrier's network, because that's what a carrier is. Yours is Telnyx, and like every carrier — including the one behind RingCentral or Google Voice — they carry the traffic and keep records of it for billing and for the law. Switching to us doesn't make that disappear. What it changes is that the searchable history stops living with a software company that also mines it, builds features on it, and decides how long to keep it. You set the retention. Nobody trains anything on your messages. And because the numbers sit in your own carrier account, cancelling us leaves you with everything — the numbers keep working and the archive is already on your hardware.

Right here: Privacy Policy. Short version — because everything's self-hosted, there's very little of your data we ever touch in the first place.

Terms & Conditions — covers using the app and the text messaging described above (consent, message frequency, STOP/HELP).