Keeping your business phone number: forward it, text-enable it, or port it

"Can I keep my number?" is the first question most owners ask about any system that texts or answers calls, and it is the right question. The number is on your van, your signage, your Google listing and in the phones of every customer who has ever called you. It is an asset, and nobody should move it casually.

The good news is that keeping it is the normal case. The thing worth getting right is which of three routes you take, because they move different amounts of your phone service and they carry very different risk.

What each route actually moves

| Route | What moves | What stays where it is | Undo | |---|---|---|---| | Forward unanswered calls | Nothing | Your number, your phone service, your voicemail | Turn forwarding off | | Text-enable your number | Messaging only | Calls, exactly as they are today | Ask your provider to remove it | | Port the number | Calls and texts both | Nothing | Port it back, which is another port |

Read that table before reading anybody's sales page, including ours. Most businesses that think they need to port need to forward.

Route 1: forward the calls you miss

Your number stays with the provider you have today. Calls that nobody picks up are forwarded to a second number, and the system that answers or texts back works from there.

This is where almost everyone should start. Nothing about your phone service changes, so there is nothing to migrate, nothing to schedule and nothing that can fail at 9am on a Monday. If you decide the whole idea is not for you, you switch forwarding off and you are exactly where you began.

The trade-off is worth knowing in advance: the text that goes out comes from the second number, not from the one the customer rang. Some people will ring the old number back rather than reply to the text. That is survivable if the first few words of the text say who you are, which is what a decent template does, and it is the main reason the next route exists.

Our guide on setting up missed-call text-back covers what that text should say and how fast it has to arrive.

Route 2: text-enable the number you already have

Text-enabling adds messaging to your existing number while voice carries on untouched. Customers text the number that is already on your vehicles, and your phone system stays out of the path of a migration entirely.

It is the best of both for a business whose number is widely printed, and it has one hard dependency: your current provider has to agree to release that number for messaging. Most will. Some will not, and a few will tell you it is already text-enabled by a vendor somebody signed up with years ago, which is worth discovering now rather than after you have planned a launch around it.

Route 3: port the number

Porting moves the number out of your current provider and into the account you are moving to. Calls and texts both arrive there afterwards, so one number does everything and the text a customer gets comes from the number they already know.

It is the right call in two situations: you are changing phone provider anyway, or texting has become central to how you work and running two numbers has started confusing people. It is the wrong call if your phone system works and you only want to catch missed calls, because that is a large change in service of a small problem.

How long it takes is set by the provider you are leaving, not by the one you are joining. A cooperative carrier is quick and an uncooperative one is not, and anybody who gives you a confident number without knowing which carrier you are on is guessing. Ask the provider you are leaving, and read the port request on the receiving side for what your particular number needs.

The mistake that loses a number for good

Do not cancel your service with the current provider until the port has completed.

It feels like the tidy thing to do and it is the one irreversible error in this whole subject. A cancelled number is released back to the carrier's pool, and once it is released your port has nothing left to move. The number keeps working throughout a port, so there is no window you need to close early and no money you save by cancelling first.

Questions to ask your current provider, before you commit to anything

• Who is named on the account, and will that person sign the authorisation? A port is authorised by the account holder. If the account is in the name of a former partner or an accountant who set it up in 2014, find that out now.
• What is the account number and the transfer passcode? Both come from the provider you are leaving, and a mismatch between what you supply and what they hold is the most common reason a port is rejected.
• Is there a contract term or a charge for leaving? A separate question from whether the number can move, and a cheaper one to ask first.
• Will you release this number for messaging only? The route 2 question, and the answer is a straight yes or no.
• Is this number already enabled for texting by anybody? If an old vendor enabled it and nobody has been reading the replies, you want to know before customers start texting it.

Registration applies on all three routes

Whichever route you take, US carriers deliver business texts only from a number whose business is registered with The Campaign Registry, and a number being thirty years old does not exempt it. Registration is about your business and what you send rather than about how the number arrived, so the job is the same on all three. Our A2P 10DLC registration guide covers what it asks for and what gets a submission rejected.

If you are also deciding between keeping your number, a new local number and a toll-free one, choosing a business texting number is the companion to this page.

Not legal advice. Carrier rules and TCPA obligations change and turn on specifics, including how you collect consent. Have counsel review your opt-in language before you send at volume.

What Frontiva does today, precisely

Being straight about this, because the answer changes what the three routes above mean for you.

The number lives in an account you own. Frontiva connects to your own Twilio account, so we never hold your number. That has a consequence worth more than it sounds: if you stop using Frontiva the number stays exactly where it is, and there is nothing to port back. Ask any vendor you are evaluating whose account the number ends up in, and what happens to it the day you leave.

All three routes work with it, because all three end with a number in your Twilio account, or with calls forwarding into one. Once it is there, two webhook fields on your integrations screen point at us, and the product tells you what to paste where. Until they point at us you can send messages and nothing your customers send will arrive, which is the one setup step people miss.

Not yet: a number we provision for you, and a registration we submit on your behalf. Both need a carrier account we do not have, so today the account is yours. Built is not the same as available, and we would rather say so here than let you find it out during a trial.

Once a reply arrives it lands in the unified inbox as an ordinary conversation, and missed-call text-back is the feature most people are keeping their number for in the first place.