

Twilio Raises $17 Million Series C To Expand Abroad - coloneltcb
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/07/twilio-series-c/

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axiom
When are they going to get SMS enabled numbers in Canada?

I know it's a drop in the bucket, but I will immediately switch over
$10k/month in business to them as soon as they do that. The other providers
are disastrously bad (yes, that includes Tropo.)

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reso
A thousand times this. One of my projects is SMS heavy, and I had to switch it
to Tropo because Twilio wouldn't do Canadian numbers. The developer experience
has been far inferior.

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axiom
The developer experience isn't even the worst of it. Try running some
reliability testing. It's mind blowing how bad Tropo is and how many random
hidden variables exist in their system.

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toomuchtodo
Which is really sad when you consider the problem. API accepts SMS and inserts
into database; workers take queue from database and action against SMS
gateways (works in reverse for messages going the other way).

How can this be that difficult to do?

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citricsquid
"We’re in the UK and will be rolling out to the rest of Europe in the next
couple months.”"

Their move to the UK was very half-assed, still no SMS support for the UK...
:( I hope they fix that with this new funding before they expand elsewhere.

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dmor
Twilio UK SMS is in rolling beta right now. Please feel free to email me at
danielle(at)twilio(dot)com and I'll do what I can to get you added, the queue
is quite long so if you applied and haven't gotten that might be why. We are
definitely aware of the extremely high demand for this service, not just in
the UK but across Europe and beyond, and our engineers are working around the
clock to get it out the door and in your hands at the level of quality and
reliability our customers have come to expect from Twilio.

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bilalhusain
Are there any plans for India?

The current pricing is too expensive. Thanks for free $10 for trial though.

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dmor
Right now the only plans I can share are those announced for expanding into
Europe, but we're dedicated to bringing Twilio to developers worldwide.

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johnbender
I was lucky enough to sit next to Evan (CTO) at a recent conference dinner and
he took the time to explain some of the complex relationships they have, or
are developing, with international telcos. From our conversation it seems that
most of the issues in the complaints here stem from the difficulty of setting
up those relationships and the cost associated with using the existing
infrastructure.

I'm not sure if anyone from Twilio can comment but maybe someone with some
relevant experience can.

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rjj
What are common use cases for Twilio?

I've perused the site and understand the functionality but don't see where
such high demand is coming from. A few people are commenting here that they
use it to send SMS, which makes sense, but I'm having trouble conceptualizing
large use cases besides text/call user for confirmation of some action or
sending a large alert to many users.

My mental summary keeps coming back to "push notifications without an app
installed and to any phone". (I'm not implying that's insignificant.) Is that
off base?

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agildehaus
It's difficult to enter the world of telecom IVR, the barrier of entry is very
high, and to do anything at a large scale requires a large up-front
investment.

Twilio makes telecom IVR as simple as writing a web application, and they're
very affordable with no up-front costs.

I've written custom emergency notification systems, call-in contests,
intelligent call forwarding systems (you could replicate Google Voice). Any
phone app you can think of can be constructed.

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rebel19
Twillio is great for getting a small app out the door. But if you need to
scale it and get any advanced form of call control it doesn't support it. It
also is a lot more difficult to move away from it if you need to scale out and
use other systems. With Tropo you can integrate it with Adhearsion and then as
you need to scale move it to Rayo or Asterisk......and you also are not
limited to the currently supported countries with Either offering. Tropo
allows you to set up your own endpoint in a country they don't support and
will integrate that in. So if you are in a South American country, or any
place that Twillio doesn't support it is the only game in town.

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christo16
It's a good service, but unless they bring prices way down, some big provider
( _Cough_ Amazon..) is going to come in and eat their lunch. Granted they
probably wouldn't offer the level of detailed APIs that Twillio does.

We started using them for SMS sending but went with Nexmo at a fraction of the
cost.

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toomuchtodo
I believe their exit strategy is to be acquired by Amazon or someone of their
scale. They drive their entire platform on Amazon AWS and the Rackspace cloud
system, and Jeff (one of the Twilio co-founders) was previously the product
manager for AWS.

I went to both Twiliocon and interviewed with Twilio. They're very smart guys,
but the problem is that its a race to the bottom. Their idea is innovative
(webapps <-> telco integration), but anyone can do it once they learn how to
handle the SMS messages between the web and the carrier gateways, as well as
how to handle call flows with Asterisk or Freeswitch.

Also, to me, it appears they're swimming upstream. Everyone else is moving
towards unlimited voice/sms, while they're trying to stick to per minute/per
sms rates (even for their VoIP offering!).

Awesome idea, excellent execution, not a long term business model.

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kennethologist
Twilio should take some of the money and invest it in allowing customers to
send SMS internationally. There Beta has to been going on for at least 2
months?? Please Twilio. Thank you.

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dmor
Roger that!

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agildehaus
Expanding internationally is a wonderful thing, Twilio will go far if they
bring their wonderful API to many countries.

I just hope they take some of that investment and bring basic voice
recognition to their product, and perhaps some more TTS voices (some Loquendo
voices would be grand!).

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yardie
Is it possible to sign up for the beta for other european countries? I only
see the UK listed.

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dmor
Yes, if you do not see the country you want on the site just drop us a note at
help(at)twilio(dot)com and we will add you to our internal list.

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rachelp
Congratulations Twilio!

