
Ask HN: What's the cheapest way to keep a phone number and forward calls? - maxxxxx
I have an old business phone number which I want to keep in case somebody calls. This will happen maybe once a month or less. Certainly not worth keeping a full VOIP plan for it. 
I thought I could port the number to Google Voice but this seems to work only for mobile numbers.
Does anybody know about a cheap service that allows me to port the number and forward calls to a new number?
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apowell
Twilio with calls routed to the free call forwarding Twimlet. $1/number/month,
plus $0.03/min. The free $30 credit will keep you going for a long time.

<http://www.twilio.com/>

<http://labs.twilio.com/twimlets/forward>

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aquark
I'd go with Twilio too ... only issue is you need to have upgraded your
account to port a number:

<http://www.twilio.com/faq/porting>

But since credit's don't expire, and you can always find another use for
Twilio in the future it is a good bet.

~~~
johns
You can upgrade without paying until your balance runs low. Just set up auto-
renew and you can buy a number.

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pbhjpbhj
Couple of things:

* Where are you?

* Who is the current supplier (for the number/line)?

* What did they say about call forwarding?

Twilio's <http://www.twilio.com/api/openvbx> does some awesome stuff in this
area (and they have a free trial) but I suspect it's massive overkill for what
you want.

~~~
maxxxxx
Right now I am with VIPYourLife. Their cheapest plan is 14.97/month. I can
forward the calls from there but since I don't use anything else I hope I can
get away cheaper than this.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Presumably you mean VOIPYourLife, <http://www.vylmedia.com/> and so are in the
USA using a non-localised business number.

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ednc
I'm using number garage for this. It is $9.99 a month, but I would love to
find a cheaper alternative since I get just a call or two a month on the
number. <http://www.numbergarage.com/>

~~~
maxxxxx
The Twilio approach other people have described here works. I haven't got my
phone number ported yet but with a test number it works great.

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jaz
I use Voip.ms for this purpose. I had a number through AT&T, which I then
ported over to these guys for $25. I then set up call forwarding to my primary
phone, which costs $0.0205 per minute.

