
Show HN: Reinventing conference calling - leonroy
https://app.brring.com/signup
======
leonroy
Hi, I've been working for the past year on this app to make conference calling
multiple people as simple as a making a regular phone call.

With conference calls you need to dial a number and then a PIN. It can get
pretty costly if you're based outside the US/UK and have to dial
internationally.

The app leverages Twilio to handle calling people in 280+ countries. It uses
the cheapest rate and allows you to setup calls immediately or schedule them
in the future.

When the call time arrives the app rings everyone and drops them into a
conference room.

Any feedback or questions appreciated!

~~~
brudgers
The landing page is entirely dedicated to sign up. I'm lazy. I won't sign up
unless I have to. The landing page has no information about the product that
makes me want to sign up. There's more information about product in your
comment than on the page. In fairness if the information in the comment was on
the page, I wouldn't sign up because the product does not solve a need I have.
For me, most products don't...I don't use Uber either.

Good luck.

~~~
leonroy
Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated.

I didn't want to spam HN with the marketing page which can found here:
[https://www.brring.com](https://www.brring.com)

It came runner up in a few design awards :)

The app was built using React, TypeScript and Spring Boot.

Here's what the app looks like on Desktop: [https://www.brring.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/brring-das...](https://www.brring.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/brring-dashboard.png)

Mobile: [https://www.brring.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mobile-
das...](https://www.brring.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mobile-
dashboard.png)

Yeah, conference calling is a niche industry, but a fairly big one. I'm hoping
the app can find a place. What we're trying to do is literally change the way
people make phone calls so you never need to remember or enter a phone number.

If you change your mind and fancy messing around with the app feel free, I've
coded it so that anyone who signs up this month gets $5.00 free call credit
(about 4 hours of US/UK calls).

We support up to 250 participants per call (start with 10 though) so if you
fancy going nuts, making the app fall over or something do :)

~~~
brudgers
Marketing isn't a bad thing on Hacker News. There are behaviors associated
with marketing that HN deals with efficiently. These include getting attention
by an annoying number of posts. I think you're probably far from that. A few
posts a few days apart is unlikely to be considered spam. If you're concerned
about overstepping HN norms, maybe contact the moderators using the |contact|
link.

Show HN is explicitly designed for people like you to market their projects.
It seems like you value HN, but are maybe erring too much on the side of
caution.

For what it's worth, your conclusions about what a large market means may be
causing you to avoid finding customers one a time. Big established markets
mean that most potential customers already have something that lessens the
problem. They're not out actively looking. The recurrent cost -- a $5 credit
-- is often not the major cost. Time spent figuring out if your product meets
their needs is more important...I mean, five bucks is nice, and consumers may
switch for it. A well run business spends more money in salary when an
employee looks at the landing page. Deploying a new app at scale means
changing a business process. That's where a new app fits into the ecosystem.

------
karen_hovh
Hi everyone, I am a developer on this cool project. Will be glad to answer any
question you might have regarding the functionality, payment integration, etc.
Keep playing with the app and make fun calls with your friends and why not
make serious calls as well :)

Looking forward to help you to get familiar with the app more and more...

------
osrec
Your description looks cool, but I don't get to know anything from your
website. Perhaps fill the landing page a bit more, then re-submit?

Also, let's say I have 3 people joining a call from the US, 3 from the UK and
3 from India. What would be the cost for an hour's conf call?

~~~
leonroy
Thanks for the feedback, I probably should post the actual marketing page next
time :)

You can see pricing here but a quick calculation suggests a call like that
would cost $13.32:
[https://www.brring.com/pricing/](https://www.brring.com/pricing/)

~~~
osrec
Do you not feel that's a bit on the high side, given the monthly cost of
things like gotomeeting and join.me?

~~~
leonroy
Sadly the cost of making phone calls internationally or even locally isn't
free. Our prices are amongst the lowest. We want to drive them down _far_
lower once we hit volume and scale for market share rather than profit.

For example our biggest competitor in the UK charges 5.8p/min just for UK
landlines. A call using your example of 9 participants for one hour would cost
a whopping £31.32 and that assumes all UK participants. It would cost far
north of that if the participants were US and India based.

Feel free to give us a spin - there's no credit card required or any kind of
hard sell tactics - we even made it easy to delete your account too once
you've used up your introductory credit :) We launched a few months ago and
getting useful criticism at this early stage is invaluable.

~~~
osrec
Sure, will do when the need arises :) Btw, who is your UK competitor?

