What happens to your number if you leave
Most providers are vague about this, which is itself informative — losing a business phone number is not an inconvenience, it is the permanent loss of every listing, invoice and van that carries it. Here is exactly what happens, including the parts that are your responsibility rather than ours.
If you forwarded your own number
Nothing happens to it, because it was never ours. You hold it with your own carrier, you keep paying them for it, and leaving means turning forwarding off. This is the single strongest reason to forward your existing number rather than replace it: it makes leaving a setting rather than a migration, and it means no decision of ours can ever cost you your number.
If we gave you a number
Cancelling does not switch it off. The subscription runs to the end of the period you have already paid for, and after that the number is held rather than released — for 30 days if you never completed a paid month, and for 60 days if you paid at least once. You get two warnings before anything happens, a fortnight out and again three days out.
Why it is held at all rather than kept forever
A number costs money every month whether or not anyone rings it, so nobody holds them indefinitely. But releasing one is irreversible — the carrier can reassign it, and a business that loses its number has customers reaching a stranger for years. The grace period exists because people cancel in a bad month and come back in a better one, and the cost of holding a number for sixty days is trivial next to the cost of being wrong about somebody.
What is deliberately cautious
Active, in trial, in arrears or cancelling-at-period-end all count as live business.
If any piece of information needed to make the decision is missing, nothing is released. Every uncertainty resolves in favour of your keeping the number.
Sent to you before the date, so it is never a surprise.
So a mistake is a small mistake rather than a cascading one.
What to do if you are leaving
If the number matters to you, say so before the grace period ends rather than after. If it is on a van and a thousand invoices, the safest thing you can do — today, while nothing is wrong — is make sure the number your customers dial is one you hold yourself. That is good advice regardless of who you use, and it is the question worth putting to any provider before you sign up with them.
Frequently asked
A number you forwarded was never ours and is unaffected. A number we provided is held for 30 days if you never completed a paid month, or 60 days if you paid at least once, with two warnings first.
No. The subscription runs to the end of the period you have already paid for.
Numbers cost money every month whether or not they ring. The grace period exists because people cancel in a bad month and come back in a better one.
Nothing is released. Any missing information resolves in favour of your keeping the number — releasing one is irreversible, so uncertainty always means leave it alone.
Forward a number you hold with your own carrier rather than using one you were given. Then leaving is a setting, not a migration — and that is worth asking any provider before signing up.