A Virtual Landline Stopped Our Mobiles Ringing At 9pm. Here Is The Whole Setup.

For a long time our business number was a personal mobile. That works right up until it does not. You give the number to a supplier, the supplier passes it on, and eighteen months later you are taking a call about a quote stood in a supermarket car park on a Sunday.

The second problem is the worse one. When your mobile is the business number, nobody else can answer it. You are the switchboard. Go away for a week and the business goes quiet.

A virtual landline solves both. We run ours on Air Landline and pay £9.99 plus VAT a month. Here is what it costs, how it works, and the settings that earn their keep.

What a virtual landline is, and what it is not

A virtual landline is a real phone number that is not tied to a socket in a wall. Someone dials it, the network catches the call, and it rings your mobile.

It is not VoIP in the way most people mean the word. No app to open. No headset. No dashboard you have to stay logged into. No internet connection needed at your end. The call lands on your mobile as an ordinary mobile call, on the normal mobile network, in a tunnel or on a train or wherever you have a bar of signal.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A lot of the competition routes calls through an app, so when your 4G wobbles the call goes with it. Air Landline diverts to your mobile number instead, which means call quality is whatever your mobile signal is and nothing more complicated than that.

What a virtual landline costs

£9.99 plus VAT a month. One number, no contract, cancel when you like, seven day free trial, nothing to pay to set it up.

Compare that with a business line from a traditional provider. You are looking at £25 to £40 a month, a twelve or twenty-four month contract, an engineer visit, and a physical line you then have to sit next to. One provider quoted us an exit fee before we had signed anything.

The thing that catches people out elsewhere is metered extras. Rivals commonly charge per minute once you pass an allowance, then another £14 to £50 for call recording or for porting your number out when you leave. Whoever you pick, read that part of the small print twice.

How it works

1. Pick a number. Local area code, or a national 03.
2. It arrives by email and goes live in roughly two minutes.
3. Tell it which mobile, or mobiles, to ring.
4. That is the setup finished.

Because the divert is set at network level rather than on a handset, you change where calls land from the control panel and it takes effect straight away. Nobody has to touch a phone.

Business call heads up

The feature that changed the most for us, and the one that sounds least impressive on a list. When a call comes in on the business number, your mobile flags it as a business call before you answer. Same handset, different context.

You stop saying “hello?” to clients, and you stop saying “good afternoon, On Track Marketing” to your mum.

Running WhatsApp Business on a landline number

This was the thing we most wanted, and the thing most people assume cannot be done. Landline numbers cannot receive SMS, so the usual six digit WhatsApp code never turns up.

The way round it: WhatsApp will verify by voice call. It rings the number and reads the code out loud. Your virtual landline forwards that call to your mobile, you hear the code, you type it in.

Air Landline put a manual check in front of this, which is sensible given how virtual numbers get abused. The process:

1. Buy the number from Air Landline.
2. Email hello@airlandline.com from your account email with proof you are a real business. A photo of your business card, your shop signage or your work van. A link to your website or a social profile. A utility bill or invoice with your business name on it. Failing all of that, ID.
3. They verify you and send the setup instructions.

Ours runs on 01977 330 205, the same number on our contact page. Clients message the business, not a person.

Getting the whole team on it without handing out mobile numbers

WhatsApp Business supports four linked devices on one account. Meta Verified takes that to ten. Everyone scans a QR code from the main account and the team sees the same conversations on their own phones.

What that stops is the part worth paying for. Nobody has to give out a personal mobile to get a client onto WhatsApp, and nobody walks out of the door with a year of client history locked inside their private chats.

A number each, or a number per job

Extra numbers at £5.99 plus VAT each mean different parts of the business can have their own.

We think about it as one number per function rather than one per person. A number for new business. A number that rings whoever handles accounts. A number that goes on one specific campaign, so you know what generated the call before you pick up. When somebody is off, you point their number at someone else and it takes about ten seconds.

Put a distinct number on a Meta ad set and you have crude but real attribution for phone leads, which is otherwise one of the hardest things in marketing to measure honestly.

Opening hours, breaks and holiday mode

Set your working hours in the control panel and calls outside them go to voicemail or to a different number, rather than to your pocket at half past nine at night.

You can schedule breaks, so lunch is actually lunch. There is a holiday mode with its own greeting, which is a better outcome than the “sorry, we’re closed over Christmas” message somebody forgot to change in 2023.

Voicemail comes back as an email with a transcription attached, so you can read it during a meeting instead of sitting through ninety seconds of someone hunting for their reference number.

Call whisper, and why it is the most underrated setting here

Free, on every plan, and almost nobody switches it on.

Before the call connects, you hear a short recorded message that the caller cannot. Something like “sales call” or “website enquiry”. You answer already knowing which hat to put on. The caller hears normal ringing and then you, and has no idea any of it happened.

Pair whisper with several numbers and it stops being a novelty. The whisper tells you which number was dialled, so you know whether this is a motorsport enquiry or a business website enquiry before you open your mouth.

The switchboard, and when not to buy it

£4.99 plus VAT a month on top of the base plan. Up to ten menu options, each routing to the same number or a different one, and whisper tells you which option the caller pressed.

Most small businesses do not need a menu and should not buy one.

A menu adds friction. If two people between them can answer anything a caller might ask, a menu is a worse experience than a human picking up. It starts earning its money at the point you have genuinely separate departments that need splitting.

What we would want to know before signing up

Landline numbers still cannot receive texts. WhatsApp Business is the workaround and it is a good one, but if you need plain SMS you will need a mobile number alongside it.

Support runs 7am to 10pm Monday to Friday. No weekends. That has never once mattered to us. If you trade on a Saturday, it might matter to you.

There is no physical handset in the price. You can buy one separately. Almost nobody reading this should.

And the obvious one. It rings your mobile, so your mobile signal is your call quality. Work somewhere with no signal and the whole model falls over.

Who this suits

Sole traders and small teams who want a business number that does not follow them to bed. Anyone whose personal mobile has become the company switchboard by accident. Anyone who wants WhatsApp running on a proper business number instead of somebody’s private one.

If you need a full contact centre with call queueing, CRM integration and live agent dashboards, this is the wrong product and you should look elsewhere. For everyone else, £9.99 plus VAT is less than most businesses spend on coffee in a week.

Frequently asked questions

Is a virtual landline a real phone number?

Yes. It is a genuine UK number with a real area code. Callers cannot tell the difference, and it works on your website, your Google Business Profile and your letterhead like any other number.

Do I need an app or an internet connection?

No. Calls divert to your mobile over the ordinary mobile network. If you have signal, you can take the call. There is nothing to open and nothing to log into.

Can I use WhatsApp Business on a virtual landline number?

Yes. WhatsApp will verify by voice call instead of SMS, and your virtual landline forwards that call to your mobile so you hear the code. Air Landline verify your business by email before enabling it.

How much does a virtual landline cost in the UK?

Air Landline is £9.99 plus VAT a month with no contract. Extra numbers are £5.99 plus VAT each and the switchboard menu is £4.99 plus VAT.

Can several people answer the same number?

Yes. Calls can ring several mobiles at once, and WhatsApp Business supports four linked devices on one account, or ten with Meta Verified.

Can I keep my existing business number?

Existing numbers can usually be ported across. Ask before you buy, because porting terms vary between providers and some charge a fee to release a number.

Can a virtual landline receive text messages?

No. UK landline numbers cannot receive SMS. WhatsApp Business is the practical workaround, but if you need plain SMS you will need a mobile number as well.

We help businesses across the UK sort out the unglamorous plumbing as well as the marketing. If you want a hand with any of it, get in touch, or read more over on Insights.