Stripe Atlas vs doola vs Firstbase: Does Your Formation Service Include a US Phone Number?

Non-residents incorporating a US company have three mainstream choices: Stripe Atlas, doola, and Firstbase. Comparison articles cover their pricing, included features, and turnaround time exhaustively. One question consistently gets buried: do any of them give you a US phone number?

The short answer is no. Not Atlas, not doola, not Firstbase. This article explains exactly what each one includes, where the phone-number gap shows up, and what to do about it.

The Direct Comparison

The phone-number column is consistently blank. None of these services includes a US phone number, because acquiring and maintaining one is a separate ongoing telecom cost they don't want to bundle.

Why the Phone Gap Exists

Formation services are paperwork businesses. They file articles of incorporation, register your business in Delaware (or Wyoming, or wherever), apply for an EIN with the IRS, and connect you to a registered agent. None of that involves running a telecommunications service.

A US phone number, by contrast, requires a licensed US telecom carrier to provision the number, an ongoing relationship with that carrier to keep it active, and infrastructure to route SMS and calls. The formation services correctly leave this to dedicated providers — but they also rarely mention the phone gap during onboarding, which is why so many non-resident founders are caught off-guard the first time a form asks for a US phone number.

What Each Service Says About the Phone

Stripe Atlas

Stripe Atlas mentions phone numbers in their post-formation guide. The Atlas dashboard's company profile has a "company phone" field. Atlas doesn't fill this in for you; they ask you to provide one. Their suggested partners for getting a number include Quo (formerly OpenPhone, with a documented partnership discount).

What Atlas does not do:

• Provision a phone number on your behalf.
• Verify the phone you list.
• Cover the cost of the phone — it's your ongoing expense.

doola

doola's plans focus on formation, EIN, registered agent, and (on Pro/Premium) bookkeeping and tax filings. The phone number is not included in any plan. doola's onboarding flow will ask you to enter a phone number for your business, but does not provide one.

doola has historically published help articles pointing founders at virtual phone providers, including some explicitly aimed at non-residents.

Firstbase

Firstbase's Standard ($399/yr) covers formation, registered agent, EIN, and a mailroom. The Mailroom is a strong feature — they scan postal mail for you, which is genuinely useful when you're outside the US — but it does not extend to phone calls or SMS. There is no Firstbase phone feature.

The "Phone Field" Moments You'll Hit

Once you complete formation through any of these services, the phone gap shows up immediately in a predictable sequence:

1. The formation service's own dashboard — Atlas, doola, and Firstbase all have a company-info section with a phone field.
2. The EIN application (IRS Form SS-4) — the IRS asks for a phone number where you can be reached.
3. Your business bank-account application — Mercury, Wise, Brex, Relay, and similar all want a US phone for the company.
4. Stripe (or other payment processor) onboarding — Stripe asks for a US phone on the business profile.
5. Vendor and customer-facing documents — your W-9 has a phone field. Contracts have a phone field. Your business website's contact page should have one.
6. B2B SaaS onboarding — Slack, Notion, HubSpot, and dozens of similar tools ask for a company phone.

Most of these are pure phone-on-file uses: the field needs a real US number, and that's the end of it. A few — most notably the bank-account application — sometimes run automated verification against the number. That's a known carrier-classification issue affecting every virtual provider equally, not something specific to a single service. (See our Virtual US Number Use Cases article for the honest breakdown.)

What "Phone-on-File" Actually Costs

This is where the headline cost-of-running-a-US-LLC numbers get misleading. Most comparison articles add Atlas's ~$100/year registered agent, doola's ~$297/year compliance plan, or Firstbase's ~$399/year Standard, and call it done. They omit the phone-number ongoing cost — which is real and recurring.

Realistic monthly phone-on-file cost from the major options:

For a founder who genuinely wants to call US customers from their laptop, Quo at $19/month is the right product. For a founder who just needs the number to exist on the W-9 and the Atlas dashboard and the IRS Form SS-4, $19/month is paying for an app you won't open.

So What Should You Do?

A practical sequence:

1. Complete formation through whichever of Atlas / doola / Firstbase fits your budget and timeline. Don't pick based on phone — none of them include it.
2. Get a US phone number from a dedicated provider before you complete the EIN application, the bank-account application, and the Stripe Atlas company-profile filling. You'll need the number for those forms, and going back to update them is annoying.
3. Match the phone provider to your actual usage pattern:
   • Will you call US customers and suppliers? → Quo (OpenPhone) at $19/month
   • Just need a number on file, no calling? → IncNumber at $7/month
   • Want extensions and an auto-attendant? → Grasshopper Solo at $14/month
4. Use the same number everywhere — W-9, contracts, website footer, formation-service dashboard, EIN application, bank application. Don't end up with three different phone numbers across different documents.

The Hidden Annual Cost of Running a US LLC from Abroad

When you add up the full annual cost of operating a non-resident US LLC, the phone is one of the smallest line items — but it's the one most consistently missing from the published comparisons. The real numbers, conservatively:

• Registered agent: $100-$200/yr (often included year 1)
• Delaware franchise tax (LLC): $300/yr flat (or $400+ for C-Corp depending on shares)
• Federal tax filings (Form 5472 + pro-forma 1120 for foreign-owned LLCs): $300-$1,500 if outsourced
• State filings (annual reports): $50-$300/yr depending on state
• US phone number: $84-$228/yr
• Optional: bookkeeping, accountant, business email, website

The phone is the easiest of these to over-pay for. A Stripe Atlas founder who picks Quo because Atlas links to it is spending $180-$228/yr for a calling product they may never open. The same founder picking IncNumber spends $84/yr for a number that exists on every form and SMS that they need.

Bottom Line

Stripe Atlas, doola, and Firstbase are all valid formation paths. None of them include a US phone number. The phone gap will appear in the first week after formation — on the EIN application, on the bank-account application, on your own formation service's dashboard, and on every B2B form for the rest of your company's life.

The cheapest realistic way to fill that gap, if you don't actually need to make calls, is a number-on-file service at $7/month. The right way if you do need to call is Quo at $15-$19/month. Either way, the choice is independent of which formation service you used — the phone gap is the same regardless.