Keep your business number for texts in HighLevel

On October 30 HighLevel opened Hosted Numbers in Labs. An agency can now host a business’s existing US number for text messages in HighLevel while phone calls keep running through the carrier the business already pays. If the number painted on your trucks, printed on your yard signs and listed on your Google Business Profile is not the number your texts come from, ask your agency this week whether your account can use it. Then check your A2P registration, because a hosted number cannot send a single text until that is approved.

HighLevel’s changelog entry, Host Your Existing Number for SMS with Hosted Numbers, opens with the scope: “Hosted Numbers is now available in Labs, allowing Agency Owners and Admins to host an eligible US local and toll free number for SMS.” On calls it is just as direct: “Voice calls continue through the number’s current carrier throughout the process.”

Texts move into HighLevel, calls stay where they are

Once a number is hosted and ready to send, texts to and from it run through HighLevel. The reminder, the review request and the customer’s “can you come Thursday instead” reply land in the same conversation as that customer’s record. The phone keeps ringing wherever it rings now.

Until now there were two ways to text from HighLevel: port the main line in, calls and all, or buy a second number just for texting. The second number has a quiet cost. A customer gets a text from digits they have never seen, saves it under nothing, and calls the office line when they want to talk.

If somebody at your office texts customers from the business line today, through the phone company’s app or a desk phone, ask where those messages go once the number is hosted. The changelog does not address it.

	Host the number you have	Port the number in	Buy a new number in HighLevel
Phone calls	Stay with your current carrier	Move to HighLevel’s phone system	Your main line is untouched; the new number needs its own forwarding
Who the text comes from	The number customers already have saved	The number customers already have saved	A number customers have never seen
What you sign	An authorization letter, sent for e-signature during setup	Port paperwork from your current carrier account	Nothing beyond the HighLevel account
A2P registration	Needed at the location; an approved one is reused	Needed before texting	Needed before texting
Where it stands today	Labs, eligible accounts, one number per request	A standard HighLevel option	A standard HighLevel option

Hosted is not the same as ready to send

HighLevel draws the line itself. A number marked Hosted has finished the hosting process. It becomes SMS ready only after three more things are complete:

• Identity verification for the location, where HighLevel requires it.
• A2P registration at the location level, which covers the brand (your legal business) and the campaign (what you text people about).
• Messaging sender setup for that number.

If the location already has an approved A2P registration, HighLevel reuses it, and nobody has to repeat registration or pick a campaign for each hosted number. A toll-free number follows a different path: it needs toll-free verification. The notes on the first Labs release list eligible US local numbers, so if your main line is toll-free, ask before planning around it.

A2P is where these projects stall. If your brand or campaign was ever rejected, fix that first: our guide to A2P 10DLC rejections reads each rejection code and says what to change before you resubmit. If you have not registered yet, the A2P registration checker walks through the items reviewers turn down.

What the setup asks of you

An agency owner or admin runs the guided setup, but some steps need the business:

• An eligibility check on the number.
• Ownership verification by an automated call to that number. Someone has to answer the business line when it rings, so tell whoever covers the phones.
• The number’s service address, selected or added. Have the address your phone company holds for the line, which can differ from your shop address.
• An authorization letter sent for electronic signature.
• Status tracking through verification, authorization, processing and final checks, visible under both Hosted Numbers and Phone Numbers.

Two questions before anyone hosts your number

Who holds the authorization?

Ask who the letter is sent to and whose name goes on it. The signer should be you or someone at your business with authority over the phone account, not an agency employee signing for you. Keep a copy. This is not legal advice; if the wording of the letter is unclear, confirm with counsel before you sign.

What happens if you leave?

Your calls never left your carrier, so the number stays on your own phone account. The texting side is the part to pin down. The changelog does not say how a hosted number is released from HighLevel, so ask in writing how it would be released, how long that takes and who starts it. Ask too whose sub-account the A2P registration lives in, since a registration in your legal business name sitting in someone else’s account is still a thing to untangle.

Here is how we answer those questions for owners who have us set up texting in HighLevel:

Ask any agency	Our answer
Whose name is the CRM in?	Yours. We set up the CRM in your name, along with the domain, website, Business Profile and tracking numbers.
Who does the setup?	One team does the work, and none of it is subcontracted.
What do I get before I pay anything?	A free consult, an honest look at where your texting stands, and a plan you keep whether or not you hire us.
How long have you done this?	Since 2015, with 4,700+ businesses served across all our services.

For agencies moving clients onto HighLevel

Hosting takes the hardest conversation out of a migration: asking a client to move the phone line their business runs on.

• Permissions. Only agency owners and admins can start and manage a request. Sub-account users can find Hosted Numbers and follow requests for their location, and users who already have permission for identity or A2P tasks can finish those for their location.
• Scope. The first Labs release covers eligible US local numbers, texting only, one number per request. A client with three lines means three requests.
• Where to find it. Turn on Hosted Numbers in Labs, then go to Settings, Phone System, Manage Numbers, choose Add Number and then Host a Number.
• Order of work. Get the location’s A2P registration approved before the first request, since HighLevel reuses it. Switch on missed-call text-back and review requests only once the number shows SMS ready, not when it first shows Hosted.

If you would rather hand client builds to a team that delivers under your brand, the partner model sets out how that works.

Our GoHighLevel setup work covers the phone system, A2P registration and the texts that run on top of them. If you want to know whether hosting, porting or a new number suits your business, send us your numbers and we will lay it out.