Phone Janitor: Frequently Asked Questions

Can't find the answers you're looking for? Contact us at support@phonejanitor.com!

General

• What does Phone Janitor cost?
• How does this work on my cell phone?
• Why isn't it cheaper or more expensive?
• Why isn't it free? So many things are free!
• Who are you?

Support

• What support options are available?
• Can I use Phone Janitor with an existing phone number?
• I'm a developer. Can I write apps that use Phone Janitor?
• I'm concerned about privacy, do you have a privacy policy?

Features

• Does Phone Janitor support SMS?
• Why aren't my filter rules doing what I want?
• Can Phone Janitor add X feature?

We charge a simple $15 per line per month. No hidden fees, no hidden limits. Even our Terms are written to be human readable. Simple is our goal.

We have found some are confused because this sort of service is new to non-technical users, and that is understandable. A Phone Janitor number exists on our service on the internet, and has no knowledge of any phones or numbers you currently own. When you setup filters for your Phone Janitor phone number, people have to call your Phone Janitor number for filtering to happen. This means if someone knows your other phone numbers, they could still call those directly. If you'd like to filter calls to your current number, contact us to talk about the porting process and we can help.

In general we make assumptions about the use cases that fit our product best and price to those. Some people like to compare to other services and while some services are useful for doing some of what Phone Janitor lines do, we don't pretend that they're the same, so we don't price them the same. We're also not in this for users or advertising dollars. We charge a fair price for the Telco costs incurred, and we buy minutes at bulk rates. Most of our expenses go to covering those Telco fees and the infrastructure running the site. Don't worry, we're really efficient at it.

This is a question we're surprised to get as often as we do. The short answer is we want to run an actual stable business so people know we're profitable and can meet their needs. We don't think someone's phone number is something we would trust to anyone but a business that will be there tomorrow. We also think it's a better relationship if we're trying to sell you a service instead of provide a service to you and sell YOU as the product to advertisers. Not everyone agrees, and that's ok, but it's worked well for us and we plan to continue doing so. As we grow, we plan to offer free services to enhance our customers' experiences.

Phone Janitor is a product of NSC which was started by Tod Hansmann and John Earnest. We have a lot of experience with systems development and the VoIP industry, and decided we wanted to make this product for ourselves, and a LOT of other people said they wanted it too. So we made that happen. We know the technology well and are prepared to meet customer needs with it.

Currently all support starts as an email to support@phonejanitor.com which is available at all times. There is a time and place for phones and chat support, and this can be negotiated through that email where appropriate. We save a significant amount on expenses supporting people this way, and can keep our prices low because of this. If you need some initial guiding through options, we're happy to set up a time to walk you through things. If a customer needs instant access to support 24/7, it's probably a bad fit for our product and we don't feel this relationship would be a good one to start.

Yes! If you're already using a phone number, we provide a simple form to start the process of "porting" the number from your current provider. The process requires us to work with telecom companies on your behalf, and may take several days to complete. If you're interested in porting a number, register a PhoneJanitor account normally and then use the "Port A Number" option in the Account page. Once submitted, we will verify your info and start working with your provider to move the number to Phone Janitor. The ported number can replace any line you are assigned currently.

Yes! All the functionality of PhoneJanitor's browser-based interface can be manipulated by an HTTP-based public Application Programmer Interface. Check out our developer documentation for all the details and some example code. If you come up with a neat project using our API, we'd love to hear about it!

We do, right here, and if you have more questions about specific aspects of it we are happy to field those via support@phonejanitor.com at any time

This is a newly released feature! It functions as well as an average cell phone provider, which is to say it still has the same speed and reliability any other SMS system you've had in the past is using.

Filters are executed in order from top to bottom, with an explicit instruction to send to voicemail if the call doesn't match. If you are looking at it and not figuring it out, you can email support@phonejanitor.com and we'll help you as quick as we can (if you change your rules after you email us, we won't have a clear picture of what you're seeing, so please keep that in mind).

Short answer: maybe! You'll have to tell us about it and if enough people want that feature, and it fits our product, we'll move it to the front of the line. Just remember we're about giving you control of how you get contacted, not getting fancy and confusing with a phone line.