

An Interactive Voice Response System for $0.00 in 10 Minutes - kyleburton
http://asymmetrical-view.com/2011/02/20/twilio-in-ten-minutes.html

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AretNCarlsen
Nice tutorial on tying these pieces together!

Title is misleading. Heroku is genuinely $0.00, but after the trial period
Twilio goes to $1/month (for the phone number reservation) and $0.01/minute
for voice calls. A bit like saying "Big-Screen TV at Best Buy for $0.00",
because, after all, you can return it for a refund within 30 days.

@korussian: Tropo is a nearly identical service that offers local numbers in
40 other countries. See their FAQ:
<https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/faq.htm> They will also host basic
scripts on their own site (Python/PHP/Javascript/Ruby), so you can do without
Heroku altogether. And the best part is, they cost three times as much
($3/month + $0.03/minute)!

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kyleburton
Thanks!

You're correct, you can set it up for free but you can't maintain it
indefinitely for free. I think you only need the $1/mo if you reserve an
actual phone number, if you stick w/the sandbox I think it stays as $0.01/min
until you deploy for real - Heroku is kinda the same, it's only free if you
use minimal resources. That's what I was shooting for: a prototype for
effectively free.

Regards,

Kyle

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jedsmith
FreePBX/Asterisk is a good alternative to this, if a pain to administer.
Twilio seems great for a request/response Web app, but going much further than
that seems like it'd be a challenge (by design; Twilio seems to emphasize that
model and simplicity).

Rather than have Twilio hand off to your 'office number' for extensions and
voicemail and such, you could just have both in the same place, which is the
Asterisk approach.

I'd be interested to hear if anybody has pulled off extensions and voicemail
using the Twilio system. I've never used it, but based upon a quick glance at
the API, it seems like it'd be doable...also, thank you for the inspiration to
do something with Twilio. Signing up tonight.

~~~
patio11
They have a full voicemail & whatever thing with a web console for
administration, as an OSS app, if you like that.

<http://www.openvbx.org/>

I don't actually use it, but I like the basic idea: spend your expensive
programming time on places where your unique contribution adds value to the
business. Common infrastructure code, on the other hand, is like a web server:
download the appropriate bit of OSS, drop it in, go back to doing valuable
work.

(I do my voicemail with a Twimlet, which is a less powerful version of the
same idea: here's the minimum viable voicemail-to-email script, just
copy/paste this URL into your config and you're good to go.)

~~~
runT1ME
Just know that even though the front end is Open source (and looking pretty
awesome might I add), the backend telco stuff is tied to twilio which means
you'll be paying their usage fees.

Unlike other open source solutions such as Asterisk or Freeswitch (which both
suck in their own ways) where you can buy your own VoIP trunking/termination
service from any number of companies and negotiate your own pricing.

Tropo has Twilio like functionality and some out of the box features for pbx-
ing, but they allow you to either run hosted, or if I'm not mistaken, purchase
their own backend telco engine and run in your own network with your own
trunking provider.

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korussian
This is brilliant! I just wish Twilio supported international numbers.

~~~
jeffiel
Drop a note to help@twilio.com, and we'll add you to the beta as soon as
possible.

~~~
korussian
Awesome, thanks!

