

Twilio Launches Roll-Your-Own Google Voice - malbiniak
http://gigaom.com/2010/06/15/openvbx/

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Tawheed
Every awesome idea I had for using Twilio (and other such services) was
shelved because of their 3cpm pricing.

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TimothyFitz
The pricing backlash is fascinating to me, because it appears that it's not
that Twilio is overpriced but more that OpenVBX is appealing to
consumers/prosumers that Twilio wasn't really reaching before.

So now I'm curious what's next: Does Twilio go after a non-b2b market? They
could add a $X/mo unlimited usage plan with whatever caveats they need to make
it financially affordable, or they could ignore the market and chase the
simpler, more lucrative b2b side they're already good at.

~~~
patio11
Option #3: Somebody does OpenVBX as a service with predictable billing. They
get to take on the marketing and support burdens of dealing with the $9 a
month subscribers, and the fact that per-user usage (and hence per-user
charges) is all over the map gets concealed by the Plans page. That company
pays Twilio a few hundred or thousand bucks a month, in whatever fashion makes
sense for their accounting practices.

I considered doing this as my Twilio app, prior to OpenVBX actually existing,
but the field was crazy-crowded and I figured the idea appeals
disproportionately to cheapskates and frauds. You get to pick your customers.
Non-technical ladies who actually pay money for things, I choose you!

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detst
But would Twilio really be the right choice to offer this kind of service? I
know they make your life easier but this could be done elsewhere for much,
much cheaper.

On that note, have you thought about a switch of service in the future for
your Appointment Reminder service? I'm sure it's nice to not have certain
problems they take care of at this stage but down the road you could cut your
costs down to a third (or less) of Twilio.

(I ask because I'm contemplating some ideas that could make use of telephony
services and I respect your opinion.)

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patio11
_On that note, have you thought about a switch of service in the future for
your Appointment Reminder service?_

I will probably not be switching. I am fortunate to be in industries where
costs are rounding error next to traditional ones, and time spent optimizing
for costs has never made sense next to the marginal revenue I could get by
taking the same time and putting it to use marketing, engineering, or
marketeering. (The exception is advertising costs, because optimizing for
those has superscalar returns due to how AdWords works.)

I don't have data yet for Appointment Reminder, obviously, but I expect that
Twilio will consume a fairly small portion of my revenue. I'm ecstatic to give
that to them in return for getting to use a programming paradigm that I'm very
familiar with and have automatic tight integration between the phone and web
parts of my offering. (See my blog later for examples of what you can do with
that for UX. It is pretty amazing.)

This is similar to why I pay for Slicehost when there are cheaper offerings
elsewhere, instantly: it works well and respects my time.

As always, I'm open to the possibility of changing when (not if) reality
whacks me upside the head and tells me that everything I know is wrong, but I
rather strongly suspect that "Twilio will turn out to be pretty cheap" is not
the hypothesis that is a source of risk for my business.

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madmaze
its google voice but for pay.. doesnt that defeat 90% of the purpose?

i use GV because its free and because it emails me voicemails.. and when i
need to call overseas.. but when getting rid of the low/free cost most of the
incentives are made irrelevant

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jeffiel
hi madmaze,

Yes, GV is great for consumers, but we built OpenVBX for businesses, and it's
hackable so you can customize it fully. Check it out, would love feedback!

FYI: OpenVBX does transcriptions, emails, text messages and has competitive
overseas prices :)

-jeff twilio.com

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madmaze
Thanks for the extra info, i guess i didnt consider the enterprise/business
side of this, i mainly checked out the twilo page and didnt spend much time on
the openvbx.

After i made the previous post i checked it out a little more and ill give it
a try and give some feed back.

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jotto
anyone know when we'll be allowed to transfer our cell phone numbers (from
ATT/verizon/tmobile etc..) to skype/google voice/twilio?

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johns
I don't know about Skype or GV, but since I work at Twilio I can answer that
for us. You can already port your numbers to Twilio. After creating and
upgrading your account, you'll see a port a number option in the dashboard. It
takes 7-10 business days.

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johns
I should clarify that we can port Google Voice and Skype numbers to Twilio. I
meant that I don't know if GV lets you port numbers in yet or not.

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rufugee
I wish one of these companies would solve the problem of using these services
on your home phone. I have service from Time Warner, but can't forward to
Google Voice or Twilio because TW doesn't offer conditional call forwarding.
So instead of forwarding to the third-party voice mail after 4 or so rings, I
only forward after a half a ring, making the service useless. I imagine TW
doesn't provide conditional call forwarding because they also offer a voice
mail service, albeit much less feature-full and $4/month.

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qq66
Their vision of how you would use their service is to to use their number as
your main number, and forward to your home phone.

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rufugee
That'd be fine, provided I could port my existing number to their service, get
a replacement number from my provider, and then buy a handset that would make
calls from my number appear as though they come from the ported number (as you
can with Android and Google Voice).

I guess a device that could forward a phone call after a number of rings would
do it, but I don't think one exists for PSTN.

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sadiq
Are there any plans for supporting UK customers?

I'd be on this in a flash.

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ErrantX
You can use Twilio in the UK :) you just have to a) sign up properly (with a
card) and b) email them to request international calling.

IIRC (I only use them for SMS) International Outbound rates to the UK are the
same as US domestic rates :)

edit: yup, <http://www.twilio.com/international-calling-rates>

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detst
> IIRC (I only use them for SMS) International Outbound rates to the UK are
> the same as US domestic rates :)

It seems only for landlines, however. I'm always amazed by the obscene rates
to call a mobile phone outside of the US. (This isn't exclusive to Twilio and
I'm not blaming them)

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mieses
Is the Twilio cost of $0.03 per minute in addition to the per minute costs of
your phone line? Why isn't SIP or IAX access allowed? It seems very expensive
and restricted.

