Do You Know Your Customer’s Cell Phone Number?
Do you need to identify phone numbers right now? Find out if a number is a cell or landline here.
Flip through your contact lists. Do you know if the phone number for each record is a cell or landline telephone number?
If you haven’t validated the phone numbers, it’s impossible to compare a landline vs cell phone number by looking at the number itself. And, it’s impossible to tell if a phone number is a fake phone number, unless there’s something obviously wrong with the telephone number.
Obviously, it’s important to know if a phone number is fake. But, why is it important to know if a telephone number a landline or cell?
First, you can’t text landline phone numbers. But, you still have to pay for the SMS message if you send a text message to a landline.
Second, there are different consumer protection regulations for cell phones. Indiscriminately calling or texting cell phones and landlines could rack up thousands—or more—in TCPA fines.
And, although the stakes may be lower here, knowing what type of phone number you have helps you understand when you’re most likely to get a response at that telephone number.
These facts bring up a more important question: how do you check phone numbers to find out if they are cell or landline phone numbers?
There’s a simple answer: use a phone validator.
Here’s what you need to know about using a phone validator to verify phone numbers.
Can you verify a cell phone number for free?
Short answer: no. You can move on to the next section if you’re satisfied with that.
Long answer: still no.
Sure, there are lots of companies that claim to offer a free phone number lookup or a free phone validator (phonevalidator.com, phone-validator.net, validito.com, and others). But these free phone validators don’t provide reliable information. It’s just not possible to get accurate phone data for free.
There’s no central database of phone numbers. Phone number data is spread out across all sorts of databases, managed by many different companies and organizations. Getting access to these databases is not easy or free.
So, any service that claims to offer free phone validation must cobble their phone number lookup together from information scraped from the internet or retrieved from databases that are not maintained or updated.
Therefore this free phone number information is just an educated guess. Often, the results are outdated or inaccurate, because the information sources are unreliable.
If you need a reliable phone validator for business use or even just getting vital phone data for personal use, you’ll have to pay for it. But, it’s not expensive.
You can verify phone numbers and get dependable data for literally pennies (or less) per telephone number.
So, attempting to verify phone numbers for free is actually a net loss when you consider the wasted time and money caused by inaccurate phone information. A reliable phone number identifier will more than pay for itself.
Landline vs cell: how to tell the difference
The process for identifying cell phone numbers and landlines is quick and easy. You can do it right in your browser with an online phone validator.
If you need to verify a single phone number, all you need is the number. Simply type it into the online phone validator interface, and you’ll get information almost immediately.
However, we asked about your contact lists earlier. You can check all your phone numbers at once with a bulk phone validator. Verifying entire lists of phone numbers is just as easy:
- Export your list as an .csv, .txt, or Excel file.
- Upload your list using the online interface.
- Retrieve your results, which are usually delivered in minutes, depending on the size of your list. All the information about your phone numbers will be added to the list and included in a comma-separated .csv file.
The Searchbug phone validator tool and bulk phone verifier will both find out if a phone number is fake. And, they’ll tell you if the number is disconnected or on the Do Not Call list.
So, you get all the information you need to call or text your phone numbers without wasting time on unusable phone numbers or racking up TCPA fines.
But, you get even more information about your phone numbers:
- Identify landline or cell phone. If you have a bunch of mystery phone numbers, our phone validator will solve that mystery for you. That way you can separate your phone numbers into separate lists for texting and use in mobile apps, and phone numbers that can only be called. Knowing what type of phone number this is also protects you from TCPA fines.
- Cell phone carrier lookup. Many SMS providers require information about the receiving cell phone number’s carrier. So, this enables you to use your cell phone numbers with any SMS service provider.
- Phone number location search. Our phone validator gets location information about your phone numbers. So, you can call or text telephone numbers at appropriate times, based on the time zone.
After you’ve used a phone validator on your phone lists, you’ll know if you have a customer’s cell phone number before you text or call, without having to ask. And, you’ll have all the associated phone number information you need to get the best results (and the most revenue) from your phone contacts.
Ready to validate phone numbers?
