With more and more businesses shifting to remote or hybrid work setups, flexibility is key. But getting a phone number for your business or remote employees through local telecom companies isn't always possible or ideal.

Plus, for employees wanting to work in more remote locations, landlines might not even be an option.

So, how can your business go remote and still stay accessible to customers, prospects, and each other over the phone? Enter virtual phone numbers. And yes, you can get these with local area codes for wherever your team members are working..

We’ll walk you through what virtual phone numbers are, how they work, and how to get one for your business in just a few minutes. But first...

What is a virtual phone number?

A virtual telephone number is a number linked to an online account with a provider, as opposed to a specific location or device. It’s sometimes called a softphone or a virtual landline.

Unlike traditional phone lines that are hardwired to physical addresses or specific phones, virtual numbers exist in the cloud. They let you make and receive calls over the Internet using any device—such as a mobile phone, computer, or desk phone—connected to a VoIP phone service (Voice over Internet Protocol).

How does a virtual phone number work?

Virtual phone numbers work using VoIP technology, which makes it possible for phone calls to be made over the Internet instead of traditional analog phone lines. When you sign up for a virtual number, it’s linked to your online account with a VoIP provider rather than to a physical phone line or PBX exchange.

Once it’s set up, you can make and receive calls from that phone number on a variety of devices using your VoIP provider’s app—including smartphones, laptops, or desk phones—wherever there’s a data or Wi-Fi connection. 

This makes them very flexible and ideal for employees (like salespeople) who need to make a lot of business calls from their personal mobile phones while on the go.

People calling you on a virtual number won’t be able to tell the difference—to them, it’ll be as if they’re just calling a regular telephone number.

How to get a virtual phone number for your business in 2 easy steps

1. Sign up for a free 14-day trial at dialpad.com/signup. (Fun fact: Dialpad was built by the folks behind Google Voice.) You can sign up with your Google or Microsoft 365 account to speed things up even more, but it takes just a few minutes.

2. That’s pretty much it. You can now pick a virtual phone number for business use. Signing up for Dialpad's AI-powered collaboration platform also gives you a virtual phone system—definitely take it for a spin during your 14-day trial and try it out. If it’s not for you, you can close your account at the end of the trial.

Virtual phone numbers in contact center operations

Power smarter contact centers with virtual phone numbers

Give every agent, team, and location a flexible virtual phone number that connects seamlessly to your contact center platform. With Dialpad, your numbers aren’t just lines; they’re intelligent, AI-driven tools that optimize staffing, streamline operations, and improve every customer conversation.

Use virtual numbers and WFM scheduling to staff smarter

Forecast and staff with confidence

Dialpad virtual phone numbers give you visibility into call traffic across teams and regions. Combine that data with Workforce Management forecasting tools to predict call volume by time, channel, or campaign so you can staff exactly where and when you need coverage.

Automate scheduling and eliminate guesswork

Once you know the demand, WFM scheduling helps create optimized shift plans automatically. Connect your virtual numbers to agent profiles and automatically assign calls based on skill, language, or queue load so the right agent always answers at the right time.

Stay agile in real time

If call volumes spike, live dashboards tied to your virtual numbers show real-time activity, adherence, and performance metrics. Managers can adjust schedules instantly and keep service levels on track without manual coordination.

Improve forecasting with virtual number insights

Turn every call into actionable data

Each Dialpad virtual number captures analytics like call volume, duration, resolution time, and topic trends. Those insights feed directly into forecasting tools to help you understand seasonality, marketing impact, and customer demand.

Plan ahead for peak performance

Use historical data from your virtual numbers to model future workloads. Whether you’re scaling for holiday rushes or new product launches, you can make confident staffing and resource decisions based on real contact trends.

Empower agents in every conversation with AI Coaching Hub

Real-time guidance right on the call

When customers reach you through a virtual number, Dialpad’s AI Coaching Hub delivers live prompts and recommendations in the moment. Agents get contextual tips, objection-handling scripts, and next-step guidance without ever leaving the call.

Unified knowledge for faster resolutions

Virtual phone numbers connect to AI-powered knowledge cards that surface policies, workflows, and product information instantly. No more tab switching or manual lookups, just confident, efficient conversations.

Improve performance with data-driven coaching

After each call, AI insights tied to virtual numbers help supervisors spot trends, evaluate performance, and provide targeted coaching. It’s continuous improvement powered by real interactions.

Get the complete picture with virtual numbers, AI, and WFM

When you combine virtual phone numbers with Dialpad’s workforce management (WFM) scheduling, forecasting, and AI-powered analytics, you unlock a complete, data-driven contact center ecosystem that is as intelligent as it is efficient.

Every interaction, whether inbound or outbound, becomes a measurable data point that fuels smarter decisions. Dialpad’s unified live dashboard brings together your entire contact center operation in real time, tracking call volume, handle time, queue health, sentiment, and abandonment rates across teams and channels. Heat maps visualize when and where spikes occur so you can forecast demand and schedule the right number of agents before peak times hit.

AI-driven transcription and sentiment analysis let supervisors do more than just monitor. They can see how conversations are unfolding, identify at-risk calls, and step in instantly when an agent needs support. Speech analytics detect keywords, filler words, or tone shifts, automatically triggering coaching tips and post-call insights inside the AI Coaching Hub.

IVR and routing analytics show you which menu options are being used and which are not, allowing you to optimize self-service paths and reduce unnecessary transfers. With BI-style custom reporting, you can blend real-time data with historical trends to uncover performance patterns, track KPIs such as average handle time or first-call resolution, and connect them directly to your WFM forecasts.

Beyond operations, Dialpad’s analytics reveal actionable opportunities across your business, from spotting training needs and coaching moments to uncovering upsell and service-to-sales potential inside customer conversations.

With virtual numbers at the core, every channel (voice, SMS, and chat) feeds into a single source of truth. You can forecast demand, staff efficiently, guide agents in real time, and continuously improve operations, all with contact center analytics built within Dialpad's AI-powered platform.

Coach and guide in real time with call monitoring

Dialpad’s call monitoring tools give supervisors and coaches real-time visibility and control to delight customers during every call. You can listen in on live calls, whisper feedback to agents without the customer hearing, or barge in when escalation is needed, all powered by Dialpad AI’s live transcription and sentiment analysis. Every monitored call becomes an opportunity for instant coaching, quality assurance, and continuous improvement, with recordings and insights feeding directly into analytics and workforce management to help your teams perform at their best.

Why get a virtual business phone number with Dialpad?

Dialpad Connect starts at just $15 per user per month, but even the least expensive version comes with:

• The virtual phone number

• Unlimited calling in the US and Canada

• Unified communications features that lets you have video meetings and send instant and SMS messages

• Unlimited call recordings

• Other business essentials like custom voicemail greetings, an auto-attendant, call forwarding service, custom outside-of-business-hours call routing, and more

Better call pickup rates for your outbound efforts

One of the major benefits of a virtual number is that it can give your business a local presence—without the need for having a physical one. You’ll be able to register a local number on third-party company directory websites like Google My Business, even if you don’t technically have an office in the area that relates to the local area code.

If your business makes a fair amount of outbound business calls to prospects, you or your reps usually have a much better chance of people picking up your call if the caller ID shows a local phone number.

You can use it across different devices

With traditional phone numbers, you usually have one number per physical phone. With virtual phone numbers and more modern business phone systems (like Dialpad), you can make and receive calls on a digital phone number using your mobile phone, desk phone, or even computer.

No more being stuck to your desk to have phone calls. Need to run errands in the middle of the workday or pick up your kids? Dialpad’s app lets you make sure that anyone dialing your virtual business number will ring your mobile phone.

You don’t need two phones anymore

With the mobile (or “softphone”) app, what that also means is you can get a virtual phone number on your personal mobile phone. For example, if you run a plumbing or home services business, you can get a virtual phone number on your personal mobile phone so that your clients can reach you throughout the day—without having to carry two phones, and without customers calling your personal number.

It’s cheaper

Physical landlines require an initial fee for all of your equipment because you’re basically building a mini telephone exchange in your office. You’ll also likely have to pay rental fees, maintenance fees, and fees for extra lines when your business is ready to expand. Ouch.

With Dialpad online phone numbers, you don’t have to pay any of these fees, and there aren’t really any costs beyond the price of your monthly or annual plan. If you need to add more (or remove) users, you can easily do that in your online account, which means you’re only paying for what you need.

How much does a Dialpad virtual phone number cost?

If you’re looking for a virtual business phone number, you can get that with any of the three pricing plans for Dialpad Connect.

Virtual phone number with area codes for local presence

Here are the area codes you can get a number for with Dialpad:

Western US

Midwestern US

Northeastern US

Southern US