Put a number on your website, your van, your ads and your WhatsApp Business account without giving out the phone your family rings. A UK mobile number is usually working within minutes — and when you are ready, it can answer itself.
You put your mobile on a Facebook Marketplace listing and it is still ringing at half past ten on a Sunday. You start something on the side and you do not want it attached to the number your children's school has. You want a WhatsApp Business account, and the only number you have is already on WhatsApp as you. You have a partner, a colleague or a family member who needs to answer the business phone too, and there is only one handset. You are selling the business, or handing it to someone, and the number is on every sign you own — but it is also the number your dentist has. None of these are technical problems. They are all the same problem: one number is doing two jobs, and the one that suffers is you.
Your own mobile, a landline, several phones at once, or a different phone after six o’clock. Change it whenever you like — it is a setting, not an engineer’s visit.
On a UK mobile (07) number. So you can text a customer a quote, and they can text you back, without either of you using a personal number.
A proper WhatsApp Business account — your business name showing instead of a number, a catalogue, replies that go out when you are asleep, and more than one person able to answer. It is the only way we do WhatsApp, and it is the version worth having.
Your website, your Google Business Profile, your ads, your invoices, your van, your business cards. It is a real, dialable UK number.
Send it somewhere else at six, or on a Sunday, or while you are away — without turning off the phone your family rings.
It is not tied to one handset, so it does not go quiet because the person holding the phone is up a ladder.
Who rang, when, how long — and, if you add Optiman Answered, what was actually said. That history is yours and it does not live in somebody’s pocket.
A UK mobile number, same session. A local area number (0151, 0203) needs an address in that area registering first, so allow a day or two for those.
Nothing goes into a phone. There is no handset, no contract and no data. The number lives with us and rings the phones you already own.
It is not set up for emergency calls and never will be. Keep your normal phone for that. This is the most important line on the page.
This is the one way to spoil a new number, and it takes thirty seconds. Once a number has been registered in the ordinary WhatsApp app on a handset, Meta will not accept it for a WhatsApp Business account — and in practice that cannot be undone. So leave WhatsApp to us. If you also want ordinary WhatsApp for yourself, keep that on your own personal number, where it belongs.
A UK mobile (07) number sends and receives texts. A local area number (0151, 0203) or a national number (0333) generally does not. If texting matters, take an 07.
Banks and many online services reject numbers that are not on a SIM, so your security codes may simply never arrive. Keep two-factor codes on your own mobile.
There is nothing to take abroad, because there is nothing physical. Wherever your own phone works, your new number reaches you.
This is the question nobody asks until it is too late, so here it is up front. The number is bought and registered by us, and used by you. That is what makes it possible to have one working in minutes instead of you opening an account with a network, and it is how the network paperwork gets handled without you touching it. What we will not do is hold it hostage. If you ever leave, we will release the number and help you move it to another provider wherever the network allows it. And we will tell you honestly, before you print it on a van, how likely that is for the particular number you have chosen — because “we will sort it out later” is not an answer when the number is on your signage. If that matters enormously to you — and for some businesses it should — say so, and we will talk about a number in your own name instead. It takes longer. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to want.
Customers see your business name and profile. On the ordinary app they see whatever number you happened to use.
Replies go out at eleven at night and on a Sunday, because the account is run by us rather than by whoever is holding a phone.
The ordinary app ties a number to one handset. A business account does not, so the business does not go quiet because somebody is driving.
Meta closes the window a day after someone writes to you. A business account can reopen it with an approved message; the phone app simply cannot.
Every thread is on your account, searchable, and still there when a member of staff leaves. Not in somebody’s pocket.
The same number can be answered on the phone by Optiman Answered and on WhatsApp by the same agent, saying the same things.
What most people want. Texts, WhatsApp Business, and it looks like a person rather than a call centre. Fastest to set up — no address needed.
Says you are local, which for a trade is worth real money. The network needs an address in that area on file first, so it is a day or two, not minutes. No texting.
Charged as a normal call to your customer and says “proper company” rather than “one bloke”. No texting.
Free for your customer to ring, which lifts response on adverts. Costs more per call at our end, so it earns its place on some businesses and not others.
A new number solves the privacy problem. It does not solve the one underneath it, which is that a phone nobody picks up is a customer who rang somebody else. So the same number can be answered, around the clock, by Optiman Answered — an AI receptionist that speaks in your words, takes the booking rather than a message, texts your booking link while the caller is still on the line, and writes down every word so nothing depends on somebody remembering. You do not have to decide that now. Take the number, put it on your website, and see how often it rings when you cannot get to it. That figure is usually the argument.
Optiman Answered — an AI receptionist for the number you are about to get.
Read about Optiman AnsweredA UK mobile number: usually within minutes of us agreeing it, in the same conversation. A local area number needs an address registering with the network first, which is a day or two. We will tell you which you are getting before we start.
Yes — and it is one of the best reasons to have one. We set it up as a proper WhatsApp Business account, which is the only version we do: your name on show, replies out of hours, several people able to answer, and the threads kept on the business account rather than a handset. ⚠ The one thing to know: do not register the number in the ordinary WhatsApp app first. Once you have, Meta will not accept it for a business account and it cannot be undone. Leave WhatsApp to us and keep the everyday app on your own personal number.
No. It is a real UK number, it rings, it can text, and it appears on their phone like any other. What they cannot do is turn up at a building because of it.
We will release it and help you move it to another provider wherever the network allows, and we will tell you before you commit how likely that is for the number you have picked. If keeping it permanently is critical to you, ask us for a number in your own name instead — it is slower and it is entirely reasonable.
No. Plenty of people want a second number for something that is not a business at all — a side project, a rental, a club, a charity, a market stall, or simply so that the number on a listing is not the number their children ring.
Yes, and people do: one for a business, one for a venture, one for adverts so they can see which advert produced the call. Each is separate and each is switchable.
No. It is not set up for emergency calls. Keep your own phone for that — this is a limit we would rather lose a customer over than have somebody discover at the worst possible moment.
There are no prices on this page yet, because we are still setting them with the first businesses using it. Ask, and we will tell you plainly what it would cost you — including whether it is worth it, which for some people it is not.
Only your email is required. The rest is what decides which kind of number we get you — whether it needs to take texts or run WhatsApp Business, and whether you want a mobile, a local landline for your town, or an 0800. It is far easier to decide before we buy it than after.