Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#1

Post by blitzo » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 8:41 AM UTC

Why choose Tropo over Twilio
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Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#2

Post by rriepe » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 9:32 AM UTC

Every time I ask, "Why don't you use Tropo?" I invariably hear "What's Tropo?"

It's a shame, because it is pretty great. I think the word is finally getting out now, though.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#3

Post by garply » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 10:03 AM UTC

I have a gripe against Twilio. Aside from their China service sucking, they keep sending me newsletters or emails that are tailored to look like they're personally written to me. The subject looks like "RE: Twilio's Developer Community" and then the text preview in gmail looks something like "Hi Joe, I wanted to drop..."

Effective at getting me to open the email, but I always feel deceived when I open it up to see the cookie-cutter mail that they've sent me.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#4

Post by nivertech » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 10:56 AM UTC

Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for $800M (same people who founded Zappos).

So what's new Twilio can offer here? I have no idea why USV invested in them...

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#5

Post by ra » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 11:01 AM UTC

rriepe wrote: post #2

Every time I ask, "Why don't you use Tropo?" I invariably hear "What's Tropo?" It's a shame, because it is pretty great. I think the word is finally getting out now, though.

We use Twilio, and I hadn't heard of Tropo.

FWIW we're not totally over the moon with Twilio, and I've since discovered freeswitch, which is much more developer friendly and scalable than asterisk.

It's all but persuaded me to roll our own telco connectivity.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#6

Post by ra » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 11:13 AM UTC

nivertech wrote: post #4

Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for $800M (same people who founded Zappos). So what's new Twilio can offer here? I have no idea why USV invested in them...

I kind of agree. Although I think the underlying assumption is that it's an infrastructure as a service play, and so Twilio et al are creating value. Obviously their target market is the web app developer crowd.

To do it yourself you need to line up your outbound SIP providers, inbound DID providers (not one and the same once you dig into the details), then you need to operate a bunch of Freeswitch / Asterisk / whatever SIP servers, and learn how to program them, and learn how keep them running smooth (Not particularly difficult, but in terms of learning requirements - it's akin to meeting a database + web server for the first time).

Due to the real-time nature of telcos (and I mean that in the traditional clock-synch'd sense of the word) there are additional complications if you want to use a virtualised OS.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#7

Post by hopeless » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 11:17 AM UTC

My more pragmatic reasons for choosing Tropi over Twilio:

1. having the voice scripts written in Ruby and hosted by Tropo was easier than building a web service to control every mundane aspect

2. Tropo would supply non-U.S. numbers if I needed them

3. Tropo made it easy to do the voice recording and POST it as an MP3

4. Tropo worked out cheaper for my little test service

Some or all of these may now have changed but i'd still give Tropo first choice in any future projects

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#8

Post by progrium » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 11:22 AM UTC

nivertech wrote: post #4

Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for $800M (same people who founded Zappos). So what's new Twilio can offer here? I have no idea why USV invested in them...

I bet in 1997 people were asking the same about Apple.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#9

Post by patio11 » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 11:53 AM UTC

nivertech wrote: post #4

Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for $800M (same people who founded Zappos). So what's new Twilio can offer here? I have no idea why USV invested in them...

So what's new Twilio can offer here?

Twilio lets a modestly competent web developer program a telecommunications company from their kitchen table in about, oh, six weeks or so. Alternatively, Twlio lets a modestly competent web developer take an existing app and add voice/SMS features to it in about a day. (Have a social site? Want to do SMS notifications when something important happens? You can implement that in four hours.)

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#10

Post by catch23 » Sun, Dec 12, 2010, 11:53 AM UTC

nivertech wrote: post #4

Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for $800M (same people who founded Zappos). So what's new Twilio can offer here? I have no idea why USV invested in them...

FYI, the people who founded Zappos did not create Tellme. You're probably thinking of Alfred Lin who actually joined Zappos as the CFO much later (after Tony), and happened to be a VP at Tellme. At least according to Tony's book, he was a PhD student before he joined Zappos.

The founder of Zappos is actually Nick Swinmurn even though many people still think it was Tony. Tony probably owns a lot more of Zappos than Nick, but neither of them had anything to do with Tellme.

Mike McCue was the founder of Tellme who most recently departed from Microsoft, and before Tellme he worked at Netscape.