Vanity phone numbers contain relevant words or phrases that help customers remember business telephone numbers, increase brand recognition, and make your company appear more established. Vanity numbers are incredibly effective marketing tools, differentiating businesses from their competitors and providing a sense of authority.
In this post, we’ll teach you how to get a vanity number, explore the benefits they offer, and introduce you to some of the top providers.
What Is A Vanity Phone Number?
A vanity phone number is a local or toll-free telephone number with a custom set of digits that spell out a word or phrase. Vanity numbers usually include the company’s name, relevant words associated with the products or services the business offers, or memorable phrases.
1-800-FLOWERS, 1-877-KARS4KIDS, and JG Wentworth’s 877-CASH-NOW are some of the most well-known vanity numbers, perfectly illustrating just how effective of a marketing strategy getting a vanity phone number can be.
While not all vanity numbers are toll-free numbers, most businesses choose toll-free number prefixes because of the sense of professionalism they provide. Popular number prefixes for vanity phone numbers are 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, 844, and 833.
Businesses can buy vanity phone numbers directly from business phone system providers or other RespOrgs with just a few clicks.
What Is A RespOrg?
A RespOrg (Responsible Organization) is an FCC-regulated business entity or carrier that assigns, maintains, ports, and manages toll-free phone numbers on behalf of end users. RespOrgs have access to the TFN Registry, which is a database of all in-use and available toll-free numbers and their current status.
RespOrgs must make their toll-free numbers “portable” (transferrable) so you can keep your existing toll-free vanity number even when switching carriers or providers.
Only RespOrgs can assign your business a toll-free vanity number, and they are prohibited from “number brokering”--attempting to sell existing vanity telephone numbers to the highest bidder.
Benefits of Using A Vanity Phone Number
Vanity phone numbers make your business more appealing to customers, boost your brand recognition, and are incredibly effective marketing tools. The top benefits of using vanity numbers include:
- Improves Consumer Trust: Having a verifiable phone number legitimizes your business, establishes a local presence, and makes consumers more likely to answer your calls. Consumers are 3-4 times more likely to reach out to a company with a vanity phone number.[*]
- Increases Brand Recognition: After a 30-second ad, 72% of shoppers remembered vanity phone numbers correctly, while only 5% remembered generic phone numbers. When businesses switch from a generic number to a vanity number, customer number recall rates improve by an astounding 84%.[*] Even if customers don’t need your products/services now, when they do, they’ll remember exactly how to contact your business.
- Provides Access to Advanced Phone Features: Buying vanity phone numbers from cloud communications platforms like UCaaS and CCaaS providers gives you access to advanced voice calling features like IVR, third-party integrations, call routing strategies, and call queues
- Better Security and Privacy: Protects your business and customers from porting-out scams, ransomware, and other security threats with features like multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encrypted voice calling, GDPR/PCI compliance, and more
- Marketing and Advertising Impact: Ads that include a vanity phone number outperform marketing materials with generic business phone numbers by 33%--and vanity numbers can make customers up to 200% more likely to recommend your business to family and friends.[*]
How To Get A Vanity Phone Number
Getting a vanity phone number is easy, convenient, and affordable. Follow the below step-by-step guide to get a vanity number for your business:
- Choose Your Vanity Number Carrier: You can purchase vanity phone numbers directly from RespOrgs, VoIP number providers, or as a feature of a business phone system. Ensure the provider has a RespOrg Certification, local and toll-free vanity numbers, and a variety of toll-free number prefixes.
- Brainstorm Potential Phone Numbers: Come up with a list of relevant words and phrases you’d like to include in your vanity phone number. For best results, choose a word that’s easy to spell, doesn’t have spelling variations, and indicates what your business does as specifically as possible (for example, 888-BUY-A-VAN is better than 888-GET-CARS.) Avoid numbers that are too similar to competitor names/numbers. Choose “evergreen” words/phrases instead of slang or “trendy” terms that will soon be outdated.
- Check Number Availability: See if your desired vanity number is available by looking it up on the provider’s searchable phone number database. If your first choice is taken, most providers offer a list of similar available alternatives.
- Pay and Claim Your Vanity Number: Once you’ve chosen your vanity number, enter your credit card and billing details on the provider’s website to claim it. Standard VoIP numbers are usually ready for use in 1-2 hours, while the activation process for toll-free vanity numbers may take between 24-48 hours.
Best Vanity Phone Number Providers
Below, we'll review the top vanity phone number providers, comparing their features and pricing.
Phone.com
Phone.com is a VoIP phone system provider offering local and toll-free vanity phone numbers, standard local numbers, international phone numbers, and number porting. Users can check to see if their desired vanity number is available on Phone.com’s number database, which also provides suggested numbers.
Phone.com plans include unlimited extensions, video conferencing with unlimited meeting durations for 10-100 participants, screen/file sharing, SMS texting, audio conferencing for up to 300 participants, voicemail-to-email, and 24/7 customer support.
Phone.com Pricing
Phone.com offers 3 plans from $12.74-$27.19/user/month with monthly billing, and $152.88/user/year with annual billing. Mix-and-match pricing is available, offering major cost savings to businesses. All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and volume discounts are available.
1 phone number (vanity, local, or toll-free) is included with each account, but vanity numbers carry a 1-time activation fee that starts at $99/number. Volume discounts are available for vanity phone numbers, with prices ranging from $4.99/month for two numbers to $1.99/month for 100 numbers.
More details are available on our Phone.com review page.
Key Phone.com Features
- Custom Greetings: Upload custom auto attendant greetings (wav, mp3, gsm) or use Text-to-Greeting feature to choose from 40+ automated voices/sound effects
- Call Handling Rules: Set business call routing rules by time of day and Caller ID, enable round robin routing, create call queues and set maximum hold times, forward calls to external numbers
- Voice Tagging: Similar to a warm transfer feature, voice tagging tells agents which menu options the caller chose before connecting them
Who Should Use Phone.com?
Phone.com is best for small businesses prioritizing affordable toll-free and local vanity phone numbers with built-in call management and video calling features. Phone.com users want to purchase vanity numbers in bulk, and plan to take advantage of mix-and-match pricing to keep operating costs low.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper is a basic VoIP calling platform offering vanity, numbers, toll-free numbers, local numbers, and number porting. International calling can be enabled, but is not included in any Grasshopper plans. Grasshopper includes a free number lookup tool on its website that provides suggestions if your desired number is already taken.
All Grasshopper plans include unlimited VoIP/WiFi calling in the US and Canada, business texting, desktop and mobile app access, virtual voicemail, and virtual faxing.
Grasshopper Pricing
Grasshopper offers a 7-day free trial and three plans from $14-$55/user/month with annual billing and $18-$70/user/month with monthly billing. While all Grasshopper plans include the same features, each plan comes with a different number of users, phone numbers, and extensions.
Unlike many other providers on this list, Grasshopper doesn’t charge a one-time activation fee for vanity numbers (though users may be charged an activation fee when purchasing additional vanity numbers above the amount included in each plan.) Additional toll-free, vanity, and local numbers are available from $10/number/month.
For more details, see our Grasshopper pricing page.
Key Grasshopper Features
- Instant Response: Automatically sends a prewritten text message to missed calls from new phone numbers
- Virtual Voicemail: Transcribes voicemail messages, sends via voicemail-to-email, stores voicemail transcripts in a searchable repository
- Virtual Receptionist: Auto attendants or live receptionist services via Ruby (add-on)
Who Should Use Grasshopper?
Grasshopper is best for solopreneurs and startups with under 5 employees purchasing a vanity phone number to help them appear more established. Grasshopper users don’t need multi-channel communication or UCaaS features, and want an easily scalable business phone app that lets them add more phone numbers, users, or extensions as opposed to advanced features.
MightyCall
MightyCall is a virtual phone system specifically designed for small businesses, offering vanity phone numbers for local and toll-free numbers, standard local/toll-free numbers, international numbers, and number porting.
As with other providers on this list, MightyCall provides a searchable number database and suggested numbers. MightyCall registers all of its users phone numbers with the CNAM database, which displays your business’s name and phone number on outbound caller ID screens.
All plans include unlimited calling, unlimited SMS/MMS, and 2 local or toll-free phone numbers. Number porting and international phone numbers are also available.
MightyCall Pricing
MightyCall offers a 7-day free trial and 4 plans from $15-$50/user/month with annual billing and $20-$50/user/month with monthly billing (all plans have user minimums.) All plans include two vanity, local, or toll-free numbers, and additional vanity numbers are available from $5/number/month. International numbers are available from $10/number/month.
More details are available on our MightyCall review page.
Key MightyCall Features
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Multi-level IVR (up to 10 sub-menus) with custom greetings, drag-and-drop call flow designer, ring groups, simultaneous ring, VIP and block list call routing, business hour routing, Dial by Name Directory, call queues
- Automated Customer Callback: Automated callbacks let customers choose the ideal time/date to receive a callback from an agent instead of waiting on hold
- Call Notes: Let's agents write post-call notes/comments that can be shared with other team members
Who Should Use MightyCall?
MightyCall is best for small teams or solopreneurs prioritizing affordable vanity and international phone numbers with SMS texting capabilities and unlimited calling minutes on all plans. It’s also a good fit for businesses needing outbound auto dialers, built-in analytics, and CRM integrations–but note that video calling and UCaaS features aren’t included.
UniTel Voice
Unitel Voice is a cloud-based VoIP phone system that also gives users the option to add a toll-free or local vanity phone number.
Choose from a 1-800, 855, 844, 888, 877, 866, or 833 toll-free number, or a local phone number in the city/area code of your choice.Users can set up their own accounts or take advantage of UniTel’s free concierge setup. Each phone number also serves as a send/receive fax line, with faxes emailed as a PDF.
UniTel Voice Pricing
UniTel offers a 30-day-money-back guarantee and 4 plans from $9.99-$69.99/user/month with monthly billing (discounts are available with annual billing.) Unlimited calling minutes are available on all plans but the most basic package, and the top two plans add team chat messaging. Although local numbers are included with all plans, vanity numbers are only available as paid add-ons ($15 one-time fee, monthly fees from $9.99/number.) Toll-free vanity numbers have a one0time $99 set-up fee in addition to the $9.99/number/month fee.
Key UniTel Features
- Conference Calling: Conference calling for up to 100 users with one-code join for $2.99/month
- Number Parking: Users can “reserve” their unused business phone numbers to prevent them from going back into the database
- Voice Call Management: Custom greetings, Do Not Disturb, Voice Talent Studio, caller ID, call logs, unlimited call handling, call transfer, simultaneous/sequential ringing, 3-way calling
Who Should Use UniTel Voice?
UniTel Voice is best for medium-sized businesses that only need one vanity phone number, and that either don't need access to advanced features aside or prefer to add them individually, a la carte.
800.com
800.com is a toll-free and vanity phone number platform offering basic VoIP calling features like caller ID, call forwarding, call blocking, call notes, and call recording. Users can easily search the available number database or port in existing numbers.
Voicemail transcriptions can be accessed within the 800.com interface, forwarded to email, or sent via SMS message.
800.com Pricing
800.com offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and three plans from $19/month (1,000 minutes, 1 number) to $127/month (5,000 minutes, 5 numbers, unlimited users) with annual pricing. Monthly pricing ranges from $23/month to $149/month. All plans include the same features, but include scaled monthly calling minutes, phone numbers, and user limitations. Vanity numbers are included in the top-tier Pro plan only, but are available as paid add-ons for lower-tier users. Pricing for vanity numbers varies.
Key 800.com Features
- Call Routing: Simultaneous/sequential call routing, custom business hour routing, time-based call routing, call forwarding, send calls to voicemail, custom ring time limits
- Call Tracking: Historical call analytics include call start/end times, call duration, searchable call recordings and transcriptions, agent notes, number of answered/missed/voicemail calls, marketing campaign tracking
- SMS Marketing: SMS campaign management, campaign lists, scheduled messages, message drafts, two-way messaging, SMS API
Who Should Use 800.com?
800.com is best for SMBs businesses needing a vanity phone number from a provider offering basic call management features and the option to choose between pay-as-you-go and unlimited calling pricing plans. 800.com users are also interested in exploring SMS marketing campaigns via business phone numbers.
FAQs
Below, we've answered vanity number frequently asked questions.
