
Plivo (YC S12) launches scalable API platform for Voice & SMS Apps - alagu
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/yc-backed-plivo-launches-its-scalable-api-platform-for-voice-sms-apps/
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azylman
"Plivo is not a direct competitor with developer-friendly Twilio, but is
targeting larger businesses in need of scale."

I'm confused how this is different from Twilio - my understanding is that
Twilio gets most of their revenue from large businesses in need of scale, as
well.

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bevenky
This is a great question to ask the right people :)

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earl
If you get bored, could you explain what a carrier is in this context? AT&T? I
presume you're the founder Venky?

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bevenky
Hey earl, yes i am one of the founders. Yes, carriers here would be AT&T or
Level3 etc..

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gwil
SIP support is a win for Plivo. I love Twilio and the overall constant
innovation in the space, but inventing proprietary mechanisms (Twilio Client)
is backwards for telephony.

Plivo is on the right track -- <http://plivo.com/opensource>. I'm excited to
use this and watch them grow.

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bevenky
Even our hosted cloud supports SIP and we dont lock you in with our carriers.
:)

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sunsu
Just talked with Rakesh via olark (very helpful) on the Plivo site. I do a lot
of stuff with Twilio and after talking with him, it sounds like Plivo has some
valid strengths and advantages.

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aarondf
Could you elaborate on what those advantages may be, for those of us who don't
quite understand the difference?

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bevenky
Aaron,

I am on of the founders of Plivo. Let me share with you what we think is
different:

1\. Native SIP Support. Works with any SIP Device. 2\. Realtime Call Control
(like in-call notifications etc..) 3\. No Limit Conferencing 4\. No carrier
Lock-in 5\. Volume pricing from the start

If you have any questions, feel free to ping us at support@plivo.com

~~~
jere
Venky, dumb question, but any idea if the call control can occur during a live
call (two endpoints are connected instead of just one endpoint connected to
plivo)? I'm trying to write an app that depends on this functionality but
can't seem to do it in twilio or tropo.

Also, does plivo provide a softphone or client library?

~~~
bevenky
Yes we can do that. Use our Transfer API and transfer both legs instead of
just one :)

Soft phone library is in roadmap.

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josh2600
Hey all!

I run biz dev for 2600hz, a competitor in the Voice API space. What Plivo is
doing is really cool for a couple of reasons:

1\. Open-Source development framework

2\. Lets you bring Non-Plivo carriers

I do have a couple observations, specifically adding the $.004 tariff onto
carrier calls kills any real option for external carriers. For those of you
who aren't in the Telecom game, a 4 tenths of a penny addition on every minute
can make an arbitrage business model much more difficult.

Second, Plivo is not very open about the tools that they use to get where they
are. This is built on FreeSWITCH, they are doing a basic implementation of
this Open-Source software as the media server. This is also the underlying
stuff powering UberConference so it's good stuff, but it's important to
mention the giants upon whose shoulders you stand.

Lastly, on-net calls should be free. As of right now they're $.004 per min for
full IP routing. That's bogus in my opinion.

Oh and by the way, everything you can do on Plivo can be run on 2600hz and our
architecture is fully scalable with over 50 APIs for all of the Telecom
functionality you'd ever want. Best of all, you can run your carriers, in your
cloud, without paying us a dime.

Github: <https://github.com/2600hz/2600hz-platform>

Kazoo Beta: <http://invite.kazoo.io>

Source: I write thepbxblog.com and I work for 2600hz.

Edit: Grammar.

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runT1ME
Uh, aren't you guys on FreeSWITCH too?

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josh2600
We utilize FreeSWITCH as our media server. I would never denigrate FreeSWITCH;
I personally think it's an excellent media server and it handles transcoding
like a boss.

I tried to clear up the misunderstanding above in my comments to be, but if
you have any further questions, I'm happy to answer.

To be clear, I didn't mean to appear as though I were attacking Plivo, that's
not my intention at all. I simply wanted to applaud their efforts and point
out a couple ways they could improve.

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c0mpute
Venky/Plivo Congratulations!

Venky, Hope you don't mind me asking this question (unrelated to Plivo), but
it will help some of us Indians who plan to apply to YC -

How did you plan/manage to create a startup using your visa? Did you already
have a Green card? Or were you on H1? Does YC encourage founders already on
H1? Also how about someone on H4 visa, do you know if YC is ok with that Visa
and would help found the company (if selected)?

Sorry to ask you these questions, as I haven't found any convincing answers to
these nagging questions.

Wishing your team all the best!

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kevinwmerritt
Here is the launch post from their blog:

[http://blog.plivo.com/post/13402619187/launch-of-plivo-an-
op...](http://blog.plivo.com/post/13402619187/launch-of-plivo-an-open-source-
alternative-to-twilio)

I like how their API is similar to Twilio. I'm interested to some of the use
cases that the FreeSWITCH platform allows, especially with Skype and Google
Voice.

~~~
bevenky
Try Plivo Cloud. We support Google Talk as well.

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white_devil
> _Unlike Twilio, which runs on Amazon’s cloud, Plivo runs on dedicated
> servers. “We know that when you run things like that on Amazon’s cloud, the
> voice qualities degrades, and you cannot guarantee quality of service to
> customers,” explains Venky._

Care to elaborate?

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bevenky
It is a known fact that for realtime voice encoding/decoding and mixing,
virtual machines may not guarantee proper kernel timing, hence leading to
issues in Voice quality.

Amazon instances are virtual in nature. Bare Metal Server work the best here.

~~~
toomuchtodo
This. I had an argument about this with the CTO of Twilio during my DevOps
interview with them. Their excuse is that it works "good enough".

Can't expect much else when one of the founders comes from AWS.

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patrickaljord
Just asked them and looks like they will support webrtc too:

→can I mix it with webrtc for web calls conf or do you plan to support webrtc
in the future?

plivo: Yes webrtc coming very very soon

plivo: :)

→so I could make free conf through webrtc and add people through regular phone
using plivo?

→good work anyway :)

plivo: Thanks

plivo: Yes once its out

→ok, cool

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jere
I can't really tell from reading about it... is webRTC browser support
happening soon? I downloaded canary last night to try some demos and had it
crash 4 times in a row.

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rokhayakebe
What is the volume pricing guys? 1/2 million SMS, 1 million SMS, 10M, 100M?

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bevenky
Our pricing starts at 0.8 cents per SMS. Thats already a price which is lower
than other providers. If you have more than 1/2 Million SMS a month shoot us
an email at support@plivo.com and we will help you out.

~~~
timaelliott
I strongly suggest you communicate your pricing as $0.008 instead of 0.8
cents. Be consistent with your units and more importantly: how people think.

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bevenky
Nice feedback. Will do.

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biot
As a counterpoint, I think in cents per minute regarding phone calls. I can
translate $0.008 with a bit of thought but 0.8 cents is immediately obvious.
Perhaps that would trip up people at Verizon[0] who think 0.99 cents is equal
to 99 cents, but I think your units are fine as-is.

[0] [http://verizonmath.blogspot.ca/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-
know-d...](http://verizonmath.blogspot.ca/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-
from-cents.html)

~~~
bevenky
hmmm, food for thought!

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runT1ME
Ok, given that we've got Plivo, Trello, and Twilio now, (and 2600hz?), can we
start standardizing the CallAPI?

I think it's a net win for everyone if users don't have to worry about api
lock-in....

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taf2
don't forget we also have tropo. +1 to standardizing CallAPI.

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runT1ME
Oops i meant to type tropo but wrote trello instead. Must have been all those
posts about it this morning!

