Virtual phone numbers: which kind you actually need

A "virtual number" is any number not tied to a SIM in a phone you are holding. That definition covers a softphone app, a developer API, a rented carrier line and a travel data plan — products with different costs, different capabilities and, critically, different answers when a signup form asks what kind of line they are.

• Softphone numbers — the free consumer apps. Calls and texts over the internet, no carrier line underneath. They register as VoIP in any lookup, which is precisely the type verification forms filter out.
• Programmable cloud numbers — the developer platforms. Excellent for building telephony into an application: full API, send and receive, keep the number as long as you pay. Almost all of them register as VoIP too, so the same filter catches them.
• Carrier-backed rented numbers — a real mobile line from a pool, held for the length of one order. Registers as a mobile line because it is one. Receive-only, and you do not keep it. This is what is sold here.
• eSIMs and travel plans — an actual subscription on an actual network, bought as a profile rather than a plastic card. A real line you keep, at subscription prices, with the setup that implies.

The third. Numbers here are carrier-backed US mobile lines drawn from a pool, reserved to one account for one order, receive-only, and priced per verification. They report as mobile lines to a carrier lookup — see non-VoIP numbers for what that check is doing — which is the reason they get through forms that refuse the first two kinds.

True of all four, and worth being straight about:

• It will not survive a re-verification you did not plan for. If a service asks you to confirm the number again next year, you need to still hold it. A rented number will be long gone; a softphone number may have been reclaimed for inactivity.
• It will not get past a block list. Where a service blocks number ranges rather than line types, the line type is not the question being asked.
• It will not make an account legitimate. If the terms say one account per person, a second number does not create a second person.

• A code, now, from a site that blocks VoIP — a rented carrier-backed number. That is what an order here is.
• Send and receive from your own software — a programmable cloud platform. Ours receives only, and its API is for ordering numbers and reading codes, not for messaging your users.
• A number you will hold for years — a real subscription, eSIM or otherwise. Nothing rented is a substitute.
• A free second line for calls and texts among people who know you — a softphone app is fine, right up until a signup form asks it what it is.