The ten dollar number that took the shop off Denny's personal cell

Two phone numbers come out of the Kowalski house. Denny's cell and the office landline. The landline is Dana's desk. Except Denny has been using it anyway, for anything with a customer on the other end, because his personal cell rings his kid's school, his bowling league, and everybody he has ever met.

In June that number showed up on a furnace quote and a school fundraiser flyer in the same week. Denny asked me how guys in my old trade keep the two apart. The answer, for a one truck shop that doesn't want another hundred dollar box on the shelf, is a second number that lives in his phone and costs ten dollars a month.

I pay for one myself. It's the number on my contact page and on the magnet on my truck door. So this comes from the paying side, and I'll do the prices first, because the pricing is the only confusing part of this product.

What it costs

Three tiers, straight off the current pricing pages. Starter is $10 per user per month and caps at ten users. Standard is $20 and lifts the cap, adds ring groups and an auto attendant menu. Premier is $30 and adds automatic call recording and deeper reporting. The Voice price is only half the bill, because business Voice rides on a Google Workspace subscription that starts around $7 per user. Starter Voice plus Starter Workspace comes to about $17 per user per month.

There's no free trial on the Voice add-on, per a couple of pricing write-ups I checked this fall, and no annual discount on the Voice line item. The Workspace part has a trial. The phone part doesn't.

For one guy with one number, there's a cheaper door. Google sells Voice Starter standalone now, $10 a month on a plain Gmail account, no Workspace behind it. One user. That's what I pay. Ten dollars, and the same number I've had for four years.

The free personal version is real too, and I ran it for a year before I paid. One number, free calling and texting in the US, voicemail that transcribes itself and lands in your email. Two things to know before you build a business on free. The terms are written for personal use, and support is a help forum, not a phone call. If the number is going on your truck, pay the ten dollars.

One more money note. Porting a number into a free account costs a $20 one-time fee, and ports into the paid versions take a few days to a couple of weeks, going by reviews and forum threads. Denny skipped all of it. He picked a fresh local number and left his landline running until the signs were printed. Nobody missed a call.

How the line went in

Numbered, because Dana was watching and I couldn't test on the customer.

1. Picked the number in the app and grabbed a prefix matching the shop's side of town.
2. Recorded the greeting on the good phone. Not on a laptop mic in a room with a box fan. I learned that one in the tax office, on a different phone system, the hard way.
3. Set the forwarding. His cell first, four rings, then Dana's phone, then voicemail that emails him the sound file.
4. Turned on the spam screen. The filtering does a decent job, and the robo callers stopped getting through inside a week.
5. Texted the number to five customers he talks to weekly, so the first callers were friendly ones.
6. Put the number on the yard sign order. That part cost him at the sign shop, not at Google.

Total: forty minutes and $10 a month. When I checked in, Denny asked, "Can it text my customers, or is it calls only?" It texts. Unlimited across the US and Canada, and Dana now sends appointment reminders from the shop number without touching Denny's phone at all.

The zone valve version

Here's my trade comparison. A second number is a zone valve in a hydronic heating system. One boiler, and a small valve decides which rooms get the heat and when. A house with no zones is hot everywhere at once. That's Denny's old cell. Every call from every part of his life, ringing one handset.

The valve costs about thirty bucks and does one job. It sends the heat where it belongs. The number costs ten. Neither one makes more heat. They sort it. For a shop answering customers all day, sorting is the whole game.

Where it runs short

No auto attendant and no ring groups until the $20 tier. The ten user cap on Starter is real, and the pricing guides this year flag it plainly, so count heads before you commit. No toll free numbers at any tier, which matters to nobody I know and somebody reading this.

The desktop side runs in a browser tab, not a real Windows app. Fine for me. Denny lives on his phone and never noticed.

Support is the honest weak spot, same as every Google product at this price. Forums and help pages. When Denny's greeting recording hung up on itself one night, I read the help doc, re-recorded it, and moved on. I'd rather have a number to call. At $10 a month, I understand why there isn't one.

And it rides the internet like every other VoIP line. When the cable line hiccups, the call hiccups with it. I said that in the Ooma post and it holds here. Fix the pipe first.

What to do Monday

Open your personal cell and count the last ten text threads. If more than five are business, set up a second number tonight and move the work ones over. The free version gets you the separation for nothing. The $10 version is sold for business, with terms that match what you're doing. Your customers don't need your kid's school on the same line. Neither do you.