

Show HN: Outbound - A single events API for emails, push, sms, and voice - dhruvkaran
http://www.outbound.io/?utm_source=hn
Empower your product manager. Let them decide what the messages to your users say, when those messages are triggered, as well as how they are sent (sms, email, etc.) while you focus on building product features. They&#x27;ll be able to use trusted providers like sendgrid, twilio and apple so you don&#x27;t have to worry about message delivery.
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plant42
There's no mention of using Google authentication anywhere other than after
clicking the login or sign-up buttons and you get the oAuth permissions/Google
login page.

Also, if you cancel the oAuth request, you get an internal server error:

[http://www.outbound.io/oauth2callback?error=access_denied](http://www.outbound.io/oauth2callback?error=access_denied)

~~~
dhruvkaran
We are working on a non-google signup flow. Most SMBs in our test group seemed
to be ok with Google login. This has changed as our acquisition channel
changed. Stay tuned for more updates.

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Figs
Why the hell would anyone give away sensitive customer information like that
to a free service?! There is ZERO incentive for them to do anything good with
MY information once you give it to them. Even if the current owner is
conscientious, if they sell their site the buyer probably won't be. I don't
want to be goddamn robocalled at 6AM because you're too cheap to pay for the
work needed to set up these services _properly_.

Web services as an industry needs to grow up. "Free" is totally inappropriate
for this.

~~~
dhruvkaran
Valid concern.

We started building this a few weeks ago. Pricing is something that's
relatively tricky in the SaaS world. We are excited to show you our work while
we figure that out.

Please get in touch and we will be happy to walk you through the pricing
possibilities.

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jmathai
It wasn't clear to me if you require me to provide my Twilio/Sendgrid
accounts? That's a deal breaker for most, I imagine.

Why not push those costs to developers and use your own accounts to send the
messages?

Start charging today. You shouldn't care about developers that are only
looking for a free service and there are plenty who would prefer to pay.

You can do a trial, of course.

This game is about trust. If you're not MailChimp then you have to figure out
how you're going to gain it. Customer.io gained my trust by calling me on the
phone and having a conversation with me before I even signed up.

~~~
dhruvkaran
All good points.

We are figuring out our pricing schemes and will definitely be charging for
the service. While we figure it out, it'll remain free.

Multiple people have asked for us to white label the providers. But the
providers have built a great suite of tools which provide you delivery
insights. Once we can roll in that value, we will look into it again. For now,
we will be focussing on a more streamlined flow to create your own provider
accounts. But we do take your point of there being friction in creating other
accounts and will be working on that.

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sharmanaetor
Integrating with SendGrid requires me to share my Sendgrid username and
password. When asking for the password, a plain text field is being used as
opposed to as password field. Anyone else find that insecure?

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Nagyman
That and no SSL. The service looks very interesting otherwise. We've been
looking at building something similar to unify how all systems communicate
with customers.

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bierko
The screenshots near the top definitely look like part of the web page -- I
tried clicking them at first. A border of some sort might help distinguish it
(I didn't see the three dots at the bottom at first, and most laptop screens
probably won't be able to see it either).

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Cryode
"Learn More" pops up a new tab, new subdomain, and a completely inconsistent
brand / style. Your logo doesn't even show up on this page. Ditch the outgoing
link feel and keep your website consistent.

~~~
dhruvkaran
Thank you for your feedback. We've heard feedback on that page and the work is
in progress.

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silasb
In the blog there are links which appear to be dead links for Heroku.

Here is one: [http://signup.outbound.io/#4](http://signup.outbound.io/#4)

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elsurudo
Fax would be a nice addition. It's antiquated, I know, but still widely used
in many industries. Hard to find a good outbound fax API. Anyone have any
recommendations?

~~~
rabidonrails
Thanks kvee! Check us out [http://phaxio.com](http://phaxio.com) \-- we're a
modern, RESTful, fax API. Let me know if you have any questions (email in
profile).

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gsiener
Your Email icon looks suspiciously like Customer.io's logo...

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dhruvkaran
We guess Sparrow (acquired by Google now) just started a paper plane trend!

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sergiotapia
I can't find a pricing page anywhere.

~~~
dhruvkaran
The service in free in beta. We will be introducing our pricing tiers
relatively soon. Please get in touch with founders@outbound.io for more
details.

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tteam
At tonido, we plan to build a system similar to yours to handle our incoming
leads. We would appreciate if you have put up a pricing page probably with a
free trial for a week. We wont trust a free service.

~~~
dhruvkaran
The service in free only in early beta. We will be introducing our pricing
tiers relatively soon. Please get in touch with founders@outbound.io for more
details. We are happy to talk through the possibilities.

