When you look into choosing a toll free number, picking the best provider for your business and your particular situation can be bewildering. What should you look for? Obviously, it depends on what your business needs, but there are some general guidelines and universals to consider.

First, decide what plan you want. There are two basic types of toll free service plans. One is a monthly service plan that works a lot like a cell phone plan: you have a flat monthly fee for a given number of minutes plus whatever features your service includes. Unless you use your toll free phone more than the monthly limit, you pay the same amount every month.

The other type of plan is pay-as-you-go. With this type of plan, you pay a monthly fee for the basic service and whatever features you want (smaller than the typical monthly service plan), and then pay a per-minute charge on top of that. Obviously, which of these is better depends on how much you expect to use your toll-free number. So that's the first calculation you need to make.

After that, consider what features you want to include besides the basic toll free service. Features that are often optional include:

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• Automatic number identification: this is basically caller ID on steroids. You can see the number the caller is calling from even if they have that blocked.
• Dialed number identification service: a useful feature if you have more than one toll-free number, it lets you see which number the caller dialed.
• Call blocking: this feature is a potential money-saver and time-saver, as it lets you block calls from outside the area you service.
• Account codes: these are special codes you can provide to special customers to make it easier to call your toll-free number.  

How useful any of these will be depends on how you plan to use your toll free number, whether you have a vanity toll free number, and other factors.

Once you've made those decisions, your choice of provider becomes much easier. Find a provider who offers all of the features that you need, that has a good reputation for reliability and business integrity, and that offers a good rate.