Hi all,

I'm just getting all of my details in order to print up some business cards for my newly licensed home bakery. I'm trying to decide what to do re: a business phone. Just wondering what other folks do...do you pay for a separate cell phone, or just use your home phone line?

I have concerns with using my home phone line i.e. people calling very late (we don't have an available voicemail plan, so we'd have the answering machine be picking up the calls out loud each time) - also, I then would feel the need to answer any call that comes in if the caller ID doesn't show who it is (vs. husband answering) to keep it professional.

I'm trying to keep costs down, but it is worth biting the bullet and getting a separate simple cell phone that is solely for the baking business?

(P.S. for more info...I do have a cell phone, but it is paid for by my other family business and I can not use it for my personal baking business)

If anyone can give insight as to how you handle phone calls, that would be appreciated!

depending on how busy you are, maybe you should start with a prepaid cell phone, that you can port the number over to a real plan when the need arises.

I do have a seperate land line for just my cake shop. I do know of a couple other decorators who use a cell phone for their shop only. So I think it just depends on what you would want to do....and expence. Some phone companys will charge you quite a bit for a BUSINESS line. I got around that route and just got a regular line.....and then ran a small add in the yellow pages with that number for my shop.

I have one. I used Vonage, so to add an additional line was only like $10/month.

Get Magic Jack. It only costs 19.95 per YEAR. It's a phone line that runs through your computer cable. Then just get a cheapie phone from Wal-Mart to hook up to it. You get a seperate phone number for it. If you ever want to answer it through your cell phone- you can forward it there. It also has caller ID and voice mail. It's super easy, super cheap, and super reliable. Not too many things like that in life!

get another line, it is more professional

I have one landline phone but i also have a distinctive ring feature where they give you another number that rings differantly, i use this for my business number. and have set up the voice mail message with a business message. no one uses the landline anymore all my kids text their friends and we generally call family in country with our cells.

I have a cell phone for biz. When we were renewing our cells, we could get a third line for free (only had to pay for the phone and I took the free one). The minutes were combined between all three cells and I have one separate for biz.

I'd go for the cell phone. Useful to use if you're out and about, either delivering cakes or picking up the kids from school...

I have a separate biz line. I use Vonage.

I have a cell phone specifically for business calls. I only turn it on during my business hours

I have a separate line on my cell plan that's $10/ month and shares my minutes. That's the number that I promote. In hindsight though, A prepaid phone might have been more economical as I don't even really use that number.

Thanks all for your input. I was offered an invite to Google voice and was considering it - put the person who sent me the invite said that he wouldn't advise using it for business - he's had people leave him messages that he never got.

I think after thinking it through and reading your posts, that I'll have hubby change his cell plan to a family plan and pay the extra to add a separate cell phone for the business.

Thanks again!

DO NOT USE MAGIC JACK!

See http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/04/14/magicjacks-eula-says.html and the update http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/23/magicjack-dials-wron.html

I have Google Voice, and while I have not used it that much, it seems like a good solution. You can forward the number, and if nothing answers you can set a voice mail for the number. You can also tell it to only send messages during certain hours, otherwise it goes to voice mail.

But, if you can afford it, getting a business line is good. The cell phone idea works, and you can turn it off when you dont want to answer it.

I use Google Voice for my business and the number can be forwarded to any phone line. I have it forwarded to my cell phone and it comes up with my business name. I've been using it since November and have not had a problem with retrieving messages.

The voice messages are transcribed into text messages (though still a little iffy) and also sent as a message to my Gmail account.

I would recommend http://www.kall8.com/index.php. For 2 dollars a month you can get a phone number or even a 800 number that you can control. You can point it to a cell phone, home phone or to voice mail with many options.