Maine is served by 207, and one code covering an entire state has a consequence most owners never think about. Your number proves you are in Maine and proves nothing else. Everything a local code does elsewhere has to be done here by what happens after somebody dials.
Disclosure: AldoMedia is a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice. If you sign up through a link on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend what we would set up for our own clients, and we say plainly below who should not buy this.
In most states an area code is shorthand for a city, and businesses argue about which one they want. Here there is nothing to argue about, and that is worth understanding rather than shrugging at.
To somebody from away, 207 is a strong signal. It says you are actually in Maine, which is the exact thing a visitor, a summer resident or an out of state buyer is trying to work out when they are choosing between you and something that turned up in a search. Keep that number. It is doing real work.
To somebody already here, 207 says nothing at all, because everyone they have ever called has one. It cannot tell them you are twenty minutes away rather than four hours. So for local trade, the number is neutral, and every bit of the impression you make has to come from somewhere else.
In a state with several codes you can buy a little credibility with your digits. In Maine you cannot, so you earn it in the first ten seconds of the call.
Three things do that work, and none of them is expensive.
A ringing phone in an empty workshop is the most common lost sale in this state. One published number can ring a handset and a mobile app together, or ring one and then the other, and take a message if neither gets there. That is what answering from anywhere means in practice, and it suits trades, boatyards, contractors and anyone whose work is not done at a desk.
A short recorded message with your name and a way to reach the right person is the cheapest credibility available to a small business, and it replaces a voicemail greeting recorded once in a kitchen. It is called an auto attendant when you go shopping for it, and it is covered on auto attendant and extensions.
Voicemail that arrives as an email gets read. Voicemail in a box gets collected on Thursday. For a business where the caller has already decided to try somebody today, that difference is the whole job.
Plenty of Maine businesses have a compressed year: the phone rings constantly for a few months and then goes quiet. A phone system handles that better than a landline does, because opening hours and after-hours routing are settings rather than rewiring. The greeting can say the yard is closed for the season and when it opens, and calls can point somewhere useful in the meantime instead of ringing out.
The honest counterweight is that you pay for the service in the quiet months as well as the busy ones, and only you can judge whether that is worth it. Weigh it across the whole year rather than the peak. If the busy season is one person answering one mobile and the quiet season is silence, this may be a cost with nothing to do.
The other seasonal risk is not a phone problem at all. The quiet half is when a domain lapses and a listing goes stale unnoticed, so put those dates somewhere you will see them.
The no here is real, and the version of it that belongs to this state is about the shape of the year.
The reasons that would be just as true in any other state, fax, a stalling connection, a live contract and the alarm panel sharing that pair, are on the main VoIP guide.
Everything above is about which Maine you sell to and when. None of it is about the technology, because the technology is identical everywhere. A VoIP phone system works the same in Maine as in Ohio or Oregon. The connection you already pay for carries the call, somebody else's hardware puts it through, and the person on the other end hears a phone ringing exactly as they always did. The general explanation is on business VoIP, the comparison with copper is on VoIP vs landline, and keeping the number you already publish is on business phone numbers.
Where we stand, in case the note at the top was easy to skim. Unitel Voice is somebody else's company. They run the phones and they decide the pricing. We are paid a commission when a signup arrives through this page, and it costs you no more than going direct. If your connection turns out to be the actual problem, that is what we will tell you. Tell us how calls reach you now.
It matters for the caller from away, who reads 207 as a business that is actually in Maine rather than a call centre somewhere else. It does not help a caller who is already here, because it does not distinguish you from anybody in the state. So keep the number you have, and stop expecting the digits to do work that only your greeting and your callback habits can do.
Sometimes, and the honest test is what the quiet half looks like rather than the busy half. If the phone is genuinely dead for months and the busy season is one person answering one mobile, a system is a cost with nothing to do. If the season means several people, missed calls, and enquiries you never got back to, it earns its place. Weigh it across the whole year, not the peak.
Test it rather than assume it, and test before you commit to anything. Voice needs a steady connection more than a fast one, and some links are quick at moving files while adding enough delay that both people on a call keep talking over each other. Make a few long video calls from the building at your busiest hour. If those are comfortable, calls will be. If they are not, no phone provider can fix it from their end.
What it is, what it needs from your connection, and the honest trade.
Read the VoIP guideThe greeting that answers when nobody can get to the phone.
Auto attendant and extensionsWhen a second number helps a business selling beyond the state.
Read about toll-freeA VoIP line runs over the internet, so there is no network to be at the edge of and no corner of the country where the service gets thin. That is why this map has no holes in it. The shading is not signal strength, it is how much has been written down: Maine has a guide of its own, and the darker states have a page for one or more of their cities as well.
Every state is linked. Business VoIP by state and city lists all fifty of them, and the 80 cities with a page, as ordinary links.
See the plans yourself, or tell us what your season does to the phone. We will tell you whether a system is the fix or an expense.
