When Holly and her husband started Superior Feline around 2018, they set out to build a different kind of cat supplement company. Their business focuses on functional cat supplements made with quality ingredients, no fillers, and a formula designed to support cats' health.

Like many small ecommerce owners, Holly's role stretches across almost every part of the business. Her days can include packing up orders and dropping them off at the post office, responding to emails, taking partner, vendor or customer calls, and working on ad messaging and website updates. As a team of two running the business, they need to trust their business tools and solutions are frictionless, easy to set-up, and most of all, reliable.

Why a business phone line mattered early on

Phone communication, whether it be with customers, partners, or vendors, has been part of the business from the beginning. Because the company's phone number is printed on product packaging, Holly and her husband can get calls and texts at all hours of the day and night.

Early on, Holly realized that a business phone line was not just a nice to have – but a necessity. It gave customers an easy, familiar way to reach out when they needed help with an order, or for vendors/partners who had a question and needed to talk to someone ASAP. Holly and her husband quickly realized their personal phone number wasn't cutting it, and opted for a more professional solution that helped to separate their work-life communications, from their personal-life ones.

The frustration with previous providers

Before Grasshopper, Holly cycled through several phone solutions, including OpenPhone, Unlisted, and LinkedPhone. Her goal was clear – to find a phone system that worked, and that she could rely on. Instead, each previous solution kept changing in ways that made everyday tasks harder, not easier, and what should have been a simple tool started to feel like one more thing to manage. A few key themes rose to the surface:

• When one provider rolled out a new interface, even basic tasks became harder to navigate. After switching again, she ran into the same problem. "I couldn't find anything," Holly said. What she really needed was a phone system that felt intuitive, consistent, and dependable from day one.
• That frustration went beyond usability. Holly also found that some plans weren't structured in a way that worked well for her business. She noted that OpenPhone only offered month-to-month billing, which made recurring expenses harder to track and plan for. For a small business trying to stay lean and organized, even small administrative issues can add unnecessary friction.
• Support was by far the biggest breaking point. When Holly ran into a 10DLC issue with OpenPhone, she submitted a ticket and waited multiple months for a response. "Five months later I finally got a hold of someone about 10DLC. I waited five months for a simple answer," she said. After an experience like that, it became clear that she needed more than features alone. She needed a provider she could trust to be there when something went wrong.

Why Grasshopper felt like a better fit

By the time Holly found Grasshopper, she had a clear sense of what her business needed. She wasn't interested in something flashy or new. She needed something stable, established, and easy to manage. Grasshopper eased all her concerns, and then some.

"Grasshopper's been around a while, it's not just another startup," she said, and that helped build trust right away. The Grasshopper platform felt stable and organized. Holly said the "online interface is more structured" and that she "thought it was a good fit." She also liked being able to pay annually instead of dealing with month-to-month billing, which gave her a more predictable way to manage expenses.

Grasshopper also gave Holly the features she needed without adding extra complexity. It let her handle calls and texts, manage voicemail the way she wanted, and stay on top of incoming communication. She also liked that it left "room to grow for if at any point in time I want to add more people to the team or more lines," which made it feel practical not just for where the business was, but where it could go next.

Still, the moment Holly knew she'd made the right decision came when she needed support. After dealing with slow responses and unresolved issues elsewhere, being able to reach a real person made a real impression. "Pretty easy to talk to a human," she said, adding that "everyone's been able to answer my questions quickly." For Holly - who has had poor experience with support from other providers - that responsiveness was proof that she'd chosen a system she could rely on, with the kind of support and straightforward experience Grasshopper is designed to provide.