Your setup checklist
Once your number is live, the Callify home page shows a Setup Guide with four steps. None of them are required — your line already takes calls — but each one fixes a specific rough edge.
Here’s what each buys you, roughly in the order worth doing them.
1. Set up business hours
Section titled “1. Set up business hours”What it does: tells Callify when your store is open. Inside those hours, calls ring your phone. Outside them, callers hear your greeting and leave a voicemail.
Why it matters: without it, your line is open 24/7. A customer in another timezone will happily ring you at 4am, and your phone will happily ring.
Skip it if: you genuinely want calls at all hours, or you’d rather not answer any calls live and want everything to go to voicemail.
2. Configure voicemail
Section titled “2. Configure voicemail”What it does: records the greeting callers hear before the beep.
Why it matters: voicemail is already on, and there’s already a greeting — a synthesised voice saying your store can’t take the call right now. It works, but it sounds like a robot. Recording your own voice makes the line sound like a real shop.
Callify records the greeting by calling your forwarding number — you speak
into your own handset, press #, and it’s saved. You can also upload an audio
file if you’d rather.
Skip it if: you’re happy with the default greeting for now. You can always record one later.
3. Register your number for texting
Section titled “3. Register your number for texting”What it does: submits your business details to the mobile carriers so they’ll deliver text messages from your number.
Why it matters: this is the one step you genuinely can’t work around. US and Canadian carriers block business texts from unregistered toll-free numbers. Until this is approved, texts you send will fail.
It takes a few minutes to fill in and a few business days for the carriers to decide.
Skip it if: you only want calls and voicemail. Those work perfectly without it — registration only affects texting.
→ Register your number for texting
4. Test your phone
Section titled “4. Test your phone”What it does: nothing automatic — it’s a prompt to call your own number from another phone and check the whole thing works end to end.
Why it matters: it’s five minutes now versus discovering a wrong forwarding digit after a customer couldn’t reach you.
Dismissing the guide
Section titled “Dismissing the guide”Once you’ve done the steps that matter to you, use Dismiss Guide to clear it off your home page. Everything it links to stays available under Settings — you’re only hiding the checklist, not turning anything off.
Underneath the guide, your home page shows counts of calls, messages and voicemails, which you can switch between today, the last 7 days and the last 30 days. Each number is compared against the same stretch of time before it, so you can see whether things are picking up.