Your First Phone Number

Phone numbers, in plain language

A DID (Direct Inward Dial) is a phone number that rings into your platform. When someone dials it from anywhere in the world, the call lands on our servers and gets routed wherever you've told it to go — an extension, a voicemail box, an auto-attendant, a call queue.

You buy DIDs from the platform. The platform buys them from carriers. You then assign DIDs to your tenants. A tenant can have one DID or hundreds.

Two flavors:

• Local DIDs — area-code-specific numbers like (501) 555-0123. Cheaper, ring-back rates apply. Used for most business lines.
• Toll-free DIDs — 800/833/844/855/866/877/888 numbers. More expensive, free for callers, no per-call inbound charge to the caller. Used for sales lines, customer support, anything you want callers to dial without thinking about cost.

Buying a local number

Click Numbers → Buy DIDs in the top nav. You'll land on the search page with the Local Numbers tab selected. Filter by State (required) and any combination of Area Code, NXX (the three digits after the area code), Rate Center, or City.

City is usually the easiest filter — start typing the city name and pick from the autocomplete. Click Search.

You'll get a results table showing available numbers, the rate center each one belongs to, and the monthly + setup pricing.

Tick the box on the number you want, then click Purchase Selected. A confirmation modal appears showing the total cost (monthly + one-time setup fee).

Click Confirm Purchase. The cost is deducted from your wallet (or charged to your card if your wallet is empty and auto-recharge is on).

The number is yours within seconds. It's already provisioned with the carrier and ready to receive calls.

Buying a toll-free number

Same flow, but click the Toll-Free tab on the search page. Two options:

• Regular — pick from a list of available numbers. Set quantity (usually 10) and click search.
• Vanity — search for a specific pattern. Use X as a wildcard, so 877-555-XXXX looks for any 877-555 number.

Toll-free pricing is higher — typically $2.50/mo wholesale plus a setup fee, and per-minute charges apply on inbound. Worth it for sales/support lines, overkill for an internal extension.

Assigning the DID to a tenant

Click Numbers → DID Inventory in the top nav. The number you just bought is in the list, marked Unassigned.

Click the Assign action on the row. A modal appears with a dropdown of your tenants.

Pick your tenant. Click Assign. Done. The number now belongs to that tenant — they'll see it in their DIDs page.

The DID isn't routed to anything yet. Calls to it will follow the tenant's default unassigned-DID behavior (configurable in their settings, defaults to a polite "this number isn't configured" message). You'll route it to something real — an extension, an auto-attendant, a queue — when you set up call flows for them. Or they'll do it themselves.

CNAM and E911 — set them now or later

Two things every DID needs eventually:

• CNAM (Caller ID Name) — the name displayed on the receiving phone when you call out from this number. Set this on the DID itself or let it inherit from the tenant's default CNAM. Carriers cache CNAM nationally for ~24h, so don't expect your changes to show up immediately on every receiving phone.
• E911 Address — the physical street address where this number is "located", for 911 dispatch routing. Required by US federal law (Kari's Law and Ray Baum's Act) for at least one number per physical location. We'll go deep on this in the Phone Numbers chapter — for now, just know it exists and that you can set it from the same Edit DID modal.

What's next

Your tenant has a phone number. Now let's make sure you can get paid when they use it.