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Buy a phone number

Once your Twilio account is connected, Taki can search Twilio's inventory and buy a number for you without leaving the app.

Decide three things:

  • Country. This drives price, capabilities, and paperwork.
  • Area code or city. Local numbers read as local to your callers.
  • Capabilities. Voice only, or voice and SMS. In most countries a local number does both.

Buy from inside Taki

  1. Open Numbers and press Buy a number.
  2. Choose the country, then optionally type an area code or a digit pattern to match.
  3. Taki shows what Twilio has available, with the monthly price and the capabilities of each number.
  4. Press Buy. The number appears in your Numbers list within a few seconds.

Twilio charges the monthly rental to your Twilio balance immediately, prorated by their rules. Taki does not add anything to that price.

Typical costs

These are Twilio list prices at the time of writing and they do change. Always confirm on Twilio's pricing page for your country.

  • US local number: about $1.15 per month
  • US inbound voice: about $0.0085 per minute
  • US outbound voice to a US number: about $0.014 per minute
  • US toll free number: about $2.15 per month, with higher inbound per minute cost

A waterfall that rings three people bills as a call leg per person you actually ring, so a busy line with lots of no-answers costs more than a single direct dial. That is Twilio's meter, not ours, and the Calls page shows you what happened on every attempt.

Attach the number to a flow

A number does nothing until it points at a flow.

  1. Open Numbers and pick the number.
  2. Choose a published voice flow, and a text flow if the number supports SMS.
  3. Save. Taki writes the webhook URLs onto the number in Twilio.

If the flow is still a draft, publish it first. Taki will not point live traffic at an unpublished graph.

Releasing a number

Releasing a number in Taki releases it in Twilio, and Twilio does not guarantee you can get it back. Numbers usually go back into general inventory. If a number has been on your business cards, port it out or keep paying the rental instead of releasing it.

Country notes

  • United States and Canada: local numbers need an address on file for some area codes. Twilio prompts for it during purchase.
  • United Kingdom, Australia, most of Europe: many number types require a local address bundle before purchase. Twilio will tell you which document is missing.

Next: build your first flow.