

Free Plivo Developer Accounts for Life - bevenky
http://blog.plivo.com/post/45362689649/free-plivo-developer-accounts-for-life

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winestock
I hate it when a company weblog doesn't have a prominent link to the home
site. Sure, I can edit the URL bar, but it's good to make things more
convenient to the user.

<http://www.plivo.com/>

UPDATE: As noted in the next comment, it's been fixed. Thanks!

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ad93611
Why can't a developer buy a plivo number? I would have been nice to have that
as well.

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bevenky
Well, Phone numbers have a carrier cost. Hence we have tried to make this win-
win. We give you the credits which allows you to build most of the needed apps
on the cloud.

For the Phone numbers, You can still bring your own phone numbers from free
services like ipkall.com and virtualphoneline.com

There are a bunch of more services like these if you google around. :)

Plivo will work with any of these around the globe.

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aoprisan
it's misleading to offer this free credit but have such a huge exclusion on
what you can do with it.. Twilio used to have a $20 credit for all new
accounts without restrictions, but now that the product matured, it's no more.
if you expect people to start building things on your platform and show them
off, give them real credit without the __*fine print.

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bevenky
You can still use all our apis and xml and build your apps. Like I mentioned
earlier, you can still use any of the free DID services and those will work
with us.

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agwa
Except you can't call out or use SMS - there aren't any free services that
provide those - which constrains the apps you can build. I have to agree that
this announcement is a little underwhelming especially compared to what Twilio
used to offer.

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rohit6223
Plivo Endpoints works just as great as real numbers. So, you can just build
your app using endpoints and use real numbers when you are good to go.

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superchink
What if I've previously signed up for an account? Is there a way to ‘convert’
my account to a developer account and leverage this new offering?

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bevenky
Sure. Shoot us your username over our live chat and we will get this done :)

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josh2600
Disclaimer: I work at 2600hz, the open-source cloud telecom company.

I don't understand what the credit is for... Is it for SIP end points to SIP
endpoint calls, or to help offset the plivo tariff on external carriers? If
you can't use the money to buy DIDs or make calls or send SMS, what can you do
with it?

Genuinely curious.

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arafalov
What can you actually use the credits for? You can't pay for incoming
calls/sms or outgoing calls/sms. That leaves IP calls and transcription costs.
Is that it? Or am I missing something.

And if I do bring my own phone number, what do I still pay for to Plivo?

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rachelmaesmith
The free developer account allows you to do more than just IP calls.

You can create Plivo endpoints to make calls on a multitude of clients ->
Browsers (using our Web SDK), iOS, Android, any Soft phone that runs SIP, and
any hardware phone that runs SIP like Polycom or Cisco.

When you bring in your own numbers, you will not be charged. Additionally,
when you make calls on these numbers, the balance is taken from the credits on
the free developer account.

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vyrotek
I'm actually in the middle of evaluating Twilio and Tropo for a client. How
does this compare?

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bevenky
Well, I am not the one to comment on them but if you are considering them you
will want to consider Plivo as well…

Drop us a note at hello@plivo.com and we will help you with it!

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Sujan
"Oops, Sorry there's been an error. We are digging into it." on signup :(
Maybe the + I used in the email address?

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ianhawes
The pricing is outrageous compared to Twilio. 8 cents per text message?

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bevenky
Not sure where you saw 8 cents. Its actually 0.8 cents and once you start
scaling higher it gets cheaper.

<http://plivo.com/pricing/>

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ianhawes
Whoops! Didn't see that :)

To be fair, I didn't see the pricing page at all. I did see the 0.8c on the
Buy Number page. I suppose 0.8c is accurate, but you'd probably be better off
putting $0.008 instead.

