Flyp is a new iOS/Android app that lets you have up to six different phone numbers simultaneously active on your smartphone. The first number is free and each additional “premium” phone number (a maximum of five) costs $2.99 per month (or $29.99 per year) to maintain. The Flyp app manages all the numbers, voicemail, text messages, and notifications. Announced at SXSW 2015, the app is actually live in the iOS store and Google Play today.
I spoke with co-founder Peter Rinfret and he told me the goal of the app is to accommodate people’s increasingly multi-faceted lives with multiple ways they can be contacted and give them options for how they can control the inflow of conversations.
For example, you can have separate phone numbers you give to work contacts, family contacts, school contacts and so on. You can then filter who can call you and when (e.g. you could put your work number on do not disturb, but leave your family number on available).
It’s also important to note that the intention of and messaging behind Flyp is different from other disposable number apps out there like Burner or Hushed, whose uses often seem somewhat ambiguous. Flyp numbers are instead permanent numbers—or at least last as long as you keep paying your monthly bill. I suppose people can use the app however they want, but Flyp are messaging this concept as a very “out in the open” management utility not a weird disposable phone number system.
This is interesting to me because I have long used Google Voice as a proxy number at which to be contacted (sorry PR peeps out there). It has been an extremely helpful tool at managing a large number of incoming calls, and I can see Flyp fulfilling a similar need.
Based on conversations with Flyp, they are aiming for their system’s tool set to be in the realm of or better than that of their competition. They have Quick Reply text messages (similar to Android Quick Responses). However the company are not going to market with Voicemail to Text transcription, but it’s on their roadmap for a later launch.
How was setup? It worked for me right out of the gate. I did notice that there are some limitations with the free number you get. You can’t customize the voice mail message and you can’t customize your quick reply messages. But at only $2.99 a month per number, it seems like an affordable option for a second (or third or fourth or fifth) phone number.
