Why we built
TimberSwitch.
We run a small group of businesses out of LTC Labs - four brands today, more on the way. They each need their own phone number, their own voicemail, their own way of routing calls. And they all need to feel like real businesses, not like one tab in someone's spreadsheet.
For a long time we did what most small businesses do: we picked one of the older phone-system providers, paid the bill every month, and worked around the rough edges. Slow admin pages. Voicemails that you had to listen to one at a time. A mobile experience that felt like an afterthought. Per-seat pricing that punished us for adding the people the business actually needed.
None of it was unworkable. It was just uninspiring. We'd notice ourselves working around the limitations every week - opening a new tab to manage a different brand, copying numbers into a spreadsheet because there was no good way to see them all in one place, screenshotting a voicemail transcript to forward it to the right person.
After enough years of that, we had a thought: maybe we should just build the phone system we wished existed. One that started from "I run multiple small businesses" instead of "I run one office of fifty people." One that treated the API as a first-class feature, not a $99-a-month upgrade. One whose admin page didn't feel like it was last updated when George W. Bush was president.
So we built TimberSwitch. We took years of small-business phone-app experience - what worked, what didn't, what we always wished was different - and made our take at it. Calm. Modern. Honest about what it is. Strong roots, modern tools.
What we wanted to be true
- You should be able to add a number in 30 seconds - not file a ticket, not wait for an account manager, not click through eight admin pages.
- Voicemail should land in your inbox as text - searchable, forwardable, useful at a glance. The audio file is still there when you want it.
- Pricing should make sense if you run more than one business - pay for the business, not for "user seats" that punish you for running lean.
- The webhook should always fire - every call event POSTs to your endpoint with a signed payload. Your CRM, your Zapier, your custom dashboard.
- Mobile should feel like a phone app, not a port - coming via native iOS + Android, not yet shipped but on the path.
- One price per business, never per seat - a three-person shop should pay for one phone system, not three seats.
- Spam calls should not reach the people answering the phone. When the hostess at a busy lunch service hears the line ring, it should be a reservation - not a windows-replacement pitch. The carrier already knows which calls are spoofed; passing that through is free, so we built spam shield into every plan, including Free.
Who it's for
Anyone who needs a business phone and wants the software to feel like it was built recently. Especially:
- Small business owners who answer the phone themselves and don't have an IT department to wrangle.
- SaaS operators and indie founders running their own products who need a real business line - for support calls, billing disputes, the occasional press inquiry.
- People running more than one business - agencies, holding companies, multi-brand operators - who shouldn't have to log in five times to manage five phone numbers.
- Anyone who wants their phone software to feel calm rather than corporate.
What's next
We're building TimberSwitch in public. The team is small (one operator, several products, a lot of lived experience). The roadmap is honest - what's shipped, what's in flight, what's deferred. You can see the security posture and sub-processor list on the /security page.
If you've been quietly working around the rough edges of an older phone system for years like we were - maybe try ours. Maybe you'll like the way we do it. Maybe you won't. But the 14-day trial is $0 with a card on file, and we email before the first charge, so the cost of finding out is low.
- Clint, LTC Labs