Things that did not work

July 17, 2025

There are a lot of almost-working solutions for getting a US phone number.

Single use problems

There are plenty of short-term single-sms services that will let you use a phone number just once to receive an SMS verification code, once, one time. They're really cheap, like $0.25 for a code.

The problem with this is, now your (e.g.) gmail account has that phone number associated with it. And you can't access the phone number again.

And because (for example) Google makes it almost impossible to contact them for support, you can't really remove that random number from your account.

So you've effectively just locked yourself out of your account.

Really, the only use for these one-off verification codes is the kind of short-term burn-and-churn activies that spammers and scammers use:

Make a new account -> Verify phone number -> Spam people -> Get banned very quickly -> Make a new account

Don't be like this. And if you're not like this, and you're doing long-term, valuable work, realize that using / sharing phone numbers with a pool of people who are doing this, is going to be bad for you. It's going to get your real account banned too. There are services that big companies can buy to know lists of spam phone numbers.

❌ One-off SMS verification services are worse than no solution: you get your accounts banned.

VoIP numbers

When Skype was a thing, you could get a cheap long term number from any country for $10/month or so.

It worked great if all you needed was to make outbound calls, or receive inbound calls from humans who were trying to actually talk to you.

I used it to talk to clients and to call customer support of US companies.

But often, when I was trying to SMS verify (for example) my PayPal account, it wouldn't work.

I would be on the phone to a PayPal customer support person, insisting that I was calling them via the number, but they just would refuse to try it. I hung up and called again to get a new human, and they eventually tried it, but their "system" refused to send an SMS verification code to my VoIP number. I had the US area code correct and everything. They somehow know that it's a VoIP number, not a real local US number.

❌ VoIP numbers only work for some use cases, some of the time. But not for the cases that really matter.

Flying to the US

I was going digital nomad for a year, and in the middle of growing my business. Repeatedly logged out and locked out, I was going insane trying to access my bank accounts / online payment accounts. With thousands of dollars on the line, I urgently needed to solve this problem. It sounds like overkill, but the cost of flight tickets was low compared to the value of having no means of accepting payment from customers.

So I flew to SF and visited a physical phone shop. Bought a SIM, and plan, and put it into my iPhone. Verified account instantly.

Finally.

It kept working for the few weeks that I was in the US.

Before I left, I upgraded to the most expensive plan with international roaming etc. $70/month or so

My prayer to the carrier: Please continue to take my money, I don't want any data or costly calls from you, I just want to receive SMS.

They killed it after a few months back in Australia.

I've heard that if you live in Canada / Mexico, they're less likely to do this to you. But what if you want to travel / nomad?

❌ A physical SIM only works if you're often in the US

Friend with a phone

I am lucky enough to have a friend who lives in Canada, who was kind enough to help me with my SMS verification woes.

We bought a cheap android phone, put a local SIM in it, and activated it.

When I needed a code, I could message him on WhatsApp / Telegram and ask for the code. It worked but I felt bad bugging him.

We tried to set up some kind of remote access app, but it was unreliable and didn't connect most of the time.

❌ This isn't a good solution, because many people don't have a kind and generous friend who happens to live in north america.

The solution

In the end, the solution for me was to start this business (hardlinephone) to solve the problem once and for all.

I now have US team members who manage and maintain a bank of phones, with US SIM cards, physically in the US.

We wrote custom software to monitor the phones and catch every SMS that arrives on the phones, and forwards it to you in an email.

✅ Long term number, works with all services, doesn't get you banned, access 24/7

If you want to solve your phone number problem once and for all, you should