Minneapolis
Area code 612.
Business VoIP in Minneapolis
Business VoIP by state
Business VoIP in Minnesota
Minneapolis is served by 612 and Saint Paul by 651. Two cities that touch each other, two codes, and a great many people here who hear the difference. It is a small signal, but a first-time caller has very little else to go on, and it is one of the few things about a phone system that genuinely changes with the state you are in.
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.
Two codes, a river apart
Most metros have one code and an overlay dropped on top of it, so the code says nothing about which part of town you are in. Here the two central cities came up with a code each, and enough people know which is which that the number on your door carries a hint of an address with it.
Our advice is dull and we will stand behind it: take the one that matches where you actually work. A Saint Paul business with a Minneapolis number gains nothing and loses a small amount of credibility with exactly the customers who care most about dealing with somebody nearby. Codes further out around the metro are more mixed than the two city codes, so read yours off your own bill rather than off a page like this one.
If you already own the number that is printed on your van and your invoices, keep it. Moving a number to a new provider is routine, and the rules that keep it uneventful are on business phone numbers.
Now the part that is not Minnesotan at all
Having spent three paragraphs on what is local, here is the honest counterweight: a VoIP phone system does not work differently in Minnesota than it does in Ohio or Oregon. Same software, same apps, same porting rules, same trade-off when the power goes out. There is no Minnesota version, and a page that implies otherwise has wrapped a national product in a state name.
What is actually local is short enough to list: which code reads as home, whether the market you sell into wants local or toll-free, and what your building and your connection do to a call. Everything else is on the main business VoIP guide, written once.
Selling to the rest of the state
Minnesota is a metro and then a long way. To a customer several hours out, a metro number is not a mark of quality, it is a signal that you are not from around here, and in some trades that is enough to lose the call to somebody in town.
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Work out where the calls come from
Not where your office is. Where the people who ring you are sitting. Those are often two different answers and only one of them matters.
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Give the second market its own number
More than one number can point into the same system, so a regional number can land on the same greeting and the same people as the metro one, with nothing duplicated behind it.
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Use toll-free only when local would mislead
If you sell across state lines, or buyers compare vendors from several places at once, a code tells them nothing useful and a toll-free number is the cleaner front door.
Closed today, and the call that still arrives
Minnesota businesses lose more calls to closures and seasons than to anything technical. A weather day, a plant shut for the holidays, a resort or a contractor whose year is compressed into a handful of months, an office where half the staff are working from somewhere else on any given morning.
None of that is a phone problem until the phone rings into an empty room. What fixes it is unglamorous: a greeting you can switch to a closed-today message from your own phone, a schedule that changes the answer after hours, and a rule sending calls to a mobile when nothing else picks up. Voicemail that arrives by email is read the same evening rather than discovered on Monday. The auto attendant covers the greeting and the extensions, and answering from anywhere covers the apps and handsets.
Build all of it on the day you install, not on the morning you need it.
Who should not switch
There is a real no here, and we would rather you found it on this page than after you paid for something.
- Nobody will touch the settings after install day. What earns its keep here is the closed-today greeting, the after-hours schedule and the rule that sends a call to a mobile. Left as they came, the phone still rings into an empty room on the first weather day.
The disqualifiers that have nothing to do with Minnesota, fax, an unsteady connection, a contract with time left and the card terminal wired to the same line, are on the main VoIP guide.
Minnesota cities with their own page
Same product, different local facts: which code covers which part of town, when the phone actually rings, and which trades ring it.
Saint Paul
Area code 651.
Business VoIP in Saint Paul
Common questions
Minnesota VoIP questions
Does it matter whether I have a 612 or a 651 number?
A little, to some callers, and not at all to the call itself. Minneapolis is served by 612 and Saint Paul by 651, and people who live with that distinction read something into it. Take the one that matches where you actually work. Nobody has ever complained that a business sounded too much like it was from where it is.
Can one phone system have numbers in two Minnesota cities?
Yes. Several numbers can point into the same system, and each can be treated differently: its own greeting, its own ringing order, or the same destination as everything else. That is the usual answer for a business with a metro office and a second market that would rather not dial the metro.
What happens to calls on a day the office is closed for weather?
Whatever you arranged in advance, which is the whole point. A closed-today greeting and a rule sending calls to a mobile take a couple of minutes to set up and can be switched on from a phone. Build both when the system is installed rather than at six in the morning with the driveway drifted shut.
Related guides
The parts of this worth reading before you buy anything.
Business phone numbers
Taking a new one, or bringing across the number on your sign.
About numbersAuto attendant
The greeting, the choices behind it, and the after-hours rule.
Greetings and extensionsVoIP vs Landline
Where copper still wins, stated plainly.
Compare the twoCoverage
A 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, and Minnesota is one of the darker ones because it has city pages of its own.
- States with city pages
- States with a guide of their own
- The state you are reading about
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.
Pick the code that matches the work
Look at the plans yourself, or tell us where your callers are and where your people are. If a phone system is not what you need, we will say so.