How to get an American (US) phone number free

Why you may need a US phone number.

No matter the reason, we all know that a USA phone number always comes in handy for your business.

A business may need a US phone number because:

1. You wish to call American customers without incurring international charges.

2. You wish to appear to have an American presence without an American address.

3. You wish to access services only available to customers with a US phone number.

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to get a FREE virtual phone number in the US via Twilio trial accounts. No credit card needed.

This tutorial will take approximately 10 mins and you do not have to pay any fees to get started.

Once you are set up with your Twilio trial number, ensure you upgrade your account to remove the annoying message.

How to get a free US phone number.

At the time of writing this article. The easiest way to get a free US phone number that can call in America is via Twilio's trial account.

A Twilo trial account also comes with a Free $15 credit to allow you to call for free. This will be perfect for our set up and test.

1. Sign up for a new account Twilio

2. Onboard and validate your phone number. You will need a validated phone number to proceed.

3. After onboarding, you will view the dashboard console as seen below:

4. Click on Get a trial phone number and an American phone number will be assigned to your account.

Thats it. Next we set up the phone number to work on HelloDuty.

Twilio + HelloDuty setup.

Now we have our free US number, we need to set it up on HelloDuty to enable us make and receive calls. The following 5 easy steps are all about pasting and copying stuff and should be easy to do in a few minutes

Part 1: Configuring Twilio endpoints

Having a phone number is not enough, you still need a phone interface to make and receive calls. This is where HelloDuty comes into the picture.

1. Create a new TwiML App‍

For the Friendly Name: USA Phone TwiML

For the Request URL: https://api-demo.helloduty.com/v3/twilio/cb and

For the Status Callback: enter https://api-demo.helloduty.com/v3/twilio/cb

2. Click 'Create'

3. Go to Manage Numbers and click on your new provisioned phone number.

4. Update the settings as follows
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5. Save the configuration.

Part 2: Setting up a Twilio Configuration.

1. Create a Free account on HelloDuty
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2. Go to settings by clicking on the gear icon.

3. Click on integration and select Twilio

4. Give your configuration a name

5. Add the following settings.

Account SID: Get the Account SID from the console page‍

Auth Token: Get the Auth Token from the console page

Application SID: Get the TwiML App SID from the TwiML App we created above.

Create a new API token from the API Keys and Tokens

Copy the keys and populate them in the API Key and API Secret fields.

Part 3: Setting up a Telephone Asset

Once the configuration has been set up, we can now set up a phone number asset and start making our calls.

1. Click on Assets and click "Create +" add the free Twilio phone number.

2. Enter the Free US phone number in the asset input.

Part 4: Assigning your self a licence.

Before you can use the HelloDuty phone, you need to assign yourself a licence.

The first admin licence is free, and with this you can get to try out the CTI.

On the navigation menu, click on Team and select your user from the list.

Select CTI and click the arrow to move it to the right. Save changes and thats it.

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Part 5: Test your phone number.

Once a license has been assigned, the phone will appear,

You can now go ahead and test the phone.

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