Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why choose Tropo over Twilio

diggz.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 102 posts

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#21

Post by danielle17 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #16
asanwal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the alternative/your expectation that they send each developer a custom email? If Twilio was to do that, that doesn't sound practical, scalable or smart.

The alternative would be to not include "RE:" in the subject, which makes it looks like a reply to an earlier thread. The subject is subject enough already. Don't manipulate it with a "RE:" to imply something more. That said, I've been working with Twilio on and off for 2 years and have never received an email like this from them.

Looks like this is a bit of email usability fail on our part. When you first sign up for Twilio, you receive an email with the subject line "Welcome to Twilio... Learn to Build Your First Phone App in Less than 5 Minutes" and then 7 days later we send you an email introducing our CEO that says "RE: Welcome to Twilio..." in the subject line. The goal was that these would get threaded together, but they don't since the from is "Twilio" in the first and we use real names in the other emails (the one from Jeff says his name, the one from me says my name, etc.)

Sorry about that, it's an easy fix to remove the RE:

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#22

Post by danielle17 »

AlexMuir wrote: post #11

Absolutely agree that Tropo is better than Twilio. Here are my reasons: 1. Cheaper 2. Multiple voices and accents (UK British Male & Female) 3. Use any number as caller ID. 4. Calls during development are free. 5. Recordings are a breeze 6. Voice recognition from a set of options instead of pressing digits (eg. "Say yes, no or repeat"). On the downside, I've found their system wasn't quite as easy to get going with a…

Hey Alex, not sure if you've logged into your Twilio account lately, but we reduced prices a couple months back so inbound calls are now $0.01/min, SMS is $0.02/msg, and phone numbers are $1/domestic or $2/toll free. We've yet to see someone actually blow through the whole $30 in trial credit, but if you run out and need more just let us know at help@twilio.com

Also not sure if you've seen this, but you can pick from English, French, German, and Spanish accents here: http://www.twilio.com/say

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#23

Post by blitzo »

"Twilio would never be able to keep up with Tropo on features" -Danielle Morrill, Twilio head marketing

edit: to downvoter, i just wanna hear from danielle himself about this qoute, no harm mean

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#26

Post by blitzo »

danielle17 wrote: post #24
blitzo wrote: post #23

"Twilio would never be able to keep up with Tropo on features" -Danielle Morrill, Twilio head marketing edit: to downvoter, i just wanna hear from danielle himself about this qoute, no harm mean

This quote is completely fabricated.

that why i put the quote here, to hear a response from you

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#28

Post by danielle17 »

ra wrote: post #5
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.

If there's anything we can do to make your Twilio experience better, I hope you'll email me, I'm danielle@twilio.com

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#29

Post by danielle17 »

garply wrote: post #3

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 th…

hey curious to know what you mean about "Chinese service sucking" since we're not international yet... are you referring to outbound calls to Chinese numbers, or something else?

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#30

Post by sachinag »

AlexMuir wrote: post #11

Absolutely agree that Tropo is better than Twilio. Here are my reasons: 1. Cheaper 2. Multiple voices and accents (UK British Male & Female) 3. Use any number as caller ID. 4. Calls during development are free. 5. Recordings are a breeze 6. Voice recognition from a set of options instead of pressing digits (eg. "Say yes, no or repeat"). On the downside, I've found their system wasn't quite as easy to get going with a…

Twilio have been more visible and active - Tropo seem slightly behind in evangelism and generally pimping their product.

1) I wouldn't say "slightly". 2) Twilio's great at it because Danielle was employee #1 at Twilio. Marketing and evangelism are in Twilio's DNA.

Post reply on HN