A virtual phone number to receive SMS, rented by the term

Search for "virtual phone number" and most results sell business telephony: a line that rings in an app, routes calls around a team, and texts customers. A SIMAREA virtual number is narrower than that. It's a real number issued by a mobile carrier, rented to one person for a term they choose, and its one job is receiving SMS: sign-up codes, login codes, delivery notices, and account alerts, from any sender.

What that means in practice:

• It receives and never sends. You can't call from it, it doesn't take calls, and you can't reply to a message from it.
• It isn't VoIP. The number comes from a mobile carrier, not from an internet calling service, which matters to apps that look at the number type before they send a code.
• Messages arrive in your account. Every SMS sent to the number during the term shows up in your SIMAREA account, on whatever device you sign in from.

If your business needs a phone line that rings, a business phone service is the right tool. If you need a number that keeps collecting codes for weeks or months, read on.

Numbers are for rent in 10 countries. The terms aren't the same everywhere, and the shortest term is where they differ:

• United States and United Kingdom: 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, or 12 months.
• Australia, Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland: 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, or 12 months.

So for a job that lasts a day or two, the United States and the United Kingdom are the two places where a rental can be as short as a day. For an account you mean to keep, every country has the half-year and full-year terms, and a longer term leaves fewer renewal dates to remember.

The number carries the code of the country you rent it in: +1 for the United States, +44 for the UK, +61 for Australia, +49 for Germany, and so on. Pick the country a service expects. If the service doesn't mind, pick by the terms you need.

Every country has an all-service line: one number that receives SMS from any app or website, however many you sign up with. In three countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, there's a second kind of rental, a line listed for one particular service. 37 services have such lines there, among them Telegram, WhatsApp, Google / Gmail, Instagram, and PayPal. Service lines rent for 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, or 12 months.

The two kinds part ways if you change your mind after paying:

• All-service line: cancel it shortly after renting, before any SMS has arrived, and the full amount comes back. The window is two hours at most and can be shorter.
• Service line: no cancellation once it's rented.

Whichever kind you rent, if the number stops working on the provider's side during the term, we replace it or refund the unused part. The refund policy sets out each case.

Plenty of people look for a permanent virtual number. We don't sell one: a number is yours while its term is paid, and renewal is what keeps it yours. Renew before the term ends and the next term continues on the same number, with the messages it has already received still in your account. Automatic renewal stays off unless you switch it on.

Before you let a number go, move every account that uses it to another number. Once a term ends without a renewal the number is released, and codes sent to it after that won't reach you.

Rent a number when a service will text you again later: a login from a new phone, a password reset, a service that re-checks the number every few months. That's what a rented number is for, because it's still yours when the next code comes.

It doesn't work for banks or government services that require a number registered in your own name. They check whose number it is, and a rented line isn't yours in that sense.