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Why choose Tropo over Twilio

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Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#41

Post by ericb »

akalsey wrote: post #37
ericb wrote: post #31

I was looking at creating an IVR monitoring tool. I would like to 1-make a call every hour, 2-record the response, and ideally 3-verify the response matches the expected. Thoughts? It looks like twilio and tropi might be able to do this (although I wasn't sure they weren't more focused on inbound), but the 1 cent price is prohibitive for what people might pay per-month especially at higher monitoring frequencies. Any…

NuGram makes a product designed for just that. You could certainly build something yourself using either a hosted service like Tropo or using Asterisk, but using something purpose built may work better. We use NuGram to test things. If you run an asterisk server the easiest way to get it hooked up to the phone network is by setting up a SIP account for it.

Thanks for the recommendations!

How is the pricing on NuGram? Is this it? http://www.grammarserver.com/welcome

I'm finding their descriptions a bit opaque. Do you remember the product name off hand? Do they host it, or do I need to look into learning what an SIP is? :-)

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#42

Post by akalsey »

patio11 wrote: post #9
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 fo…

With Tropo, you can implement that in less than four minutes - it's two lines of code. Ruby:

message "something important happened", {:to => '14155551212', :network => 'SMS'}

And then one line of code to hit our session API over http and run the code.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#43

Post by danielle17 »

garply wrote: post #35
danielle17 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Outbound calls to a Chinese number had a failure rate of about 50% (failed with a couple of different error messages, can't quite remember what exactly they were anymore, although I remember thinking they didn't seem particularly relevant... like claiming the number dialed was busy even when it definitely wasn't, etc). Also sometimes the calls would go through but then disconnect immediately after I picked up and I w…

Thanks, there are different challenges with international routing by country and by receiving carrier. I'll definitely pass this information along, and if you have specific calls (I'd need your Twilio account ID to look at them, better sent via email) that will help a lot, too. We know international support is important to developers everywhere, and we're definitely working on it.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#44

Post by danielle17 »

HectorRamos wrote: post #39
danielle17 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We've been experimenting with Twilio for the past few months, have some proofs of concepts up and running, but in the end it seems like we will launch with Tropo instead. We're based in Puerto Rico, which even though is technically in the US, we can't get local numbers through Twilio. It also helps that Tropo has TTS in spanish and other languages. Would really love to see Twilio match Tropo in these regards eventual…

Hey Hector, thanks for this feedback I'll check with the team on the status of Puerto Rico phone numbers. Regarding TTS, you might want to take a closer look at the Twilio verb, we actually support Spanish TTS... you just have to specify the language and you'll get the right accent, like this:

Es un robot que hablan español!

Also have French and Germain. Details here: http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2010-04-01/twiml/say

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#45

Post by visionik »

patio11 wrote: post #9
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 fo…

I'm Voxeo's CEO.

Thanks for the summary of what Twilio makes possible.

What nivertech (who you responded to) knows and was trying to say is this:

With Voxeo (and others) a competent web developer has been able to create a telecom company in six weeks - or add voice features in less than a day - for ten years now. Voxeo delivered and has grown a completely free web-based telephony developer program since 2000.

And since 2000 over 200,000 developers have used Voxeo to do just that.

This is the Voxeo developer site in the wayback machine archive from August 19, 2000:

http://bit.ly/voxeo-dev-2000

Quoting that site:

"our mission at voxeo community is to make it as easy as possible for web developers, service providers, and enterprises to create and deploy applications for an existing market of 1.5 billion telephone users.

existing web developers & services use technologies like Perl, PHP, Cold Fusion, Microsoft ASP and Java Servlets to create web applications for traditional web browsers via HTML. we make it just as easy to use those technologies to create web applications for telephones, using phone markup languages such as VoiceXML, Microsoft WTE, and CallXML."

Here's the juicy part:

"if you have experience creating web applications, this site will help you create and test your first phone application in less than an hour -- without any new hardware or software."

Sound familiar? :)

What Twilio has done that's new is use marketing and hype to convince developers they invented something that was invented by others and available for a decade now. The power of hype never ceases to amaze me.

To be fair, Twilio also did a great job creating more modern developer documentation and refocusing on simplicity. These are things Voxeo had drifted away from as we grew into "the man". In short, we got distracted by million dollar deals with enterprises and carriers. We've continued to invest in our developer community but things got increasingly complex as we added more and more features and options over time.

Our new Voxeo Labs group - and it's Tropo.com service - was created to fix that. We're behind on the evangelism but way ahead on the technology. And I dare say we're getting better at evangelism every week. ;)

-Jonathan

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#46

Post by danielle17 »

akalsey wrote: post #32
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

Danielle said this during the API panel moderated by Thomas Howe at ITExpo West in October this year. When asked of the differences, she said that Twilio was focused on growing the market and making it easy for web devs instead of trying to keep up with Tropo on features. Many itexpo sessions are recorded. There may be audio or video of this somewhere.

That is very different from saying we'd never be able to keep up on features.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#47

Post by stanleydrew »

akalsey wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

With Tropo, you can implement that in less than four minutes - it's two lines of code. Ruby: message "something important happened", {:to => '14155551212', :network => 'SMS'} And then one line of code to hit our session API over http and run the code.

This is pretty disingenuous. It's the same exact two lines of code to do this in Twilio. Yes if you know ahead of time what those two lines are then you can type them in less than four minutes. Same goes for Twilio.

I think what patio11 is referring to is the amount of time it would take for a new developer who's never seen the Twilio API before to get up and running. This includes things like the time to understand the API and documentation. The actual writing of the code is always the easiest part of implementing something.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#48

Post by visionik »

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.

I'm Voxeo's CEO.

First - Danielle I have the utmost respect for you and the marketing momentum you've been able to build around Twilio. However, saying the "quote is completely fabricated" is itself is fabricated ;) It's not a quote - it's a reference to something you said at ITExpo west this year. Diggz wasn't there, but he (and I) were told by multiple people that you said it.

Voxeo is an extremely open and honest company. I mean extremely. I seriously doubt any single Voxeon would make this up, never-mind multiple Voxeons. It's personally important to me to resolve this because I feel the honor and honesty of Voxeo is being challenged when you say it's "completely fabricated". Are you claiming you said nothing at all like that?

Second, wether you now acknowledge saying it or not… to be frank, in my (and many other web-powered telephony industry vets) opinion it happens to be pretty darn true. Twilio has done a great job focusing on simplicity. Twilio is many great things - but Twilio is not innovative. I'm not trying to be a competitor or a jerk when I say that… I honestly have not seen a single technology innovation delivered by Twlio. If you disagree, please suggest a few and so I and others who have been doing this for ten years can openly and fairly respond.

I'll give you some examples of what I mean - compared to Voxeo. But I want to make it clear that this is not all about Voxeo. You could also make comparisons to TelMe, Bevocal, Telera, Motorola and several others who were around ten years ago. Voxeo is far from being the only company that invented and innovated the web telephony industry ten years ago:

1. Voxeo created and patented most of the technology and concepts Twilio uses today . in 2000, as shown here:

http://bit.ly/voxeo-patent

2. Like Voxeo, Twilio makes it easy for any web developer to create telephony applications, with a focus on lower cost and ease of use. Voxeo has done that for ten years, as shown from the archived Voxeo developer web site on August 19, 2000:

http://bit.ly/voxeo-dev-2000

Sound like a familiar message?

3. Their are slides in Twilio's 2008-2009 investor presentation which are nearly an exact duplicate of Voxeo's 1999-2000 investor presentation. To be clear, I don't know if Twilio's founders saw our presentation but the business plan concepts are so similar that slides were nearly exactly duplicated. Down to the words and diagrams used.

4. Twilio leveraged "super angels" to help build marketing momentum. Although the term didn't exist back then, Voxeo's angel investors in 2000 included Eric Schmidt (now CEO of Google), Dale Fuller (then CEO of Borland), and David Orfao (then CEO of Allaire) ... they helped us build significant marketing momentum.

5. This is the first Voxeo example app in our docs, circa 2000:

Hello World

This is the first Twilio example in your docs, ten years later:

Hello Monkey

All marketing BS and propaganda aside: Voxeo and Tropo.com are just way ahead of Twilio when it comes to innovation and features. Everything Twilio has today Voxeo had ten years ago. And Voxeo/Tropo have many features Twilio doesn't: voice recognition, open SIP access, Skype integration, universal API for voice / SMS / IM / Twitter / etc, open source web client access (phono.com), direct Ruby/PHP/Phython/Groovy script language support (no need to force everything into XML and back to get things done)… there is no way Twilio could keep up match Voxeo / Tropo innovation and features, because Twilio is ten years behind from the get-go. And Voxeo is investing more in new innovation and features today than ever.

I and the rest of Voxeo have always tipped our hats to Twilio when it comes to your marketing, modern web developer outreach, refocusing on simplicity, pricing models, etc. Seriously, hats off.

However, the singular thing that bugs me (and other industry vets) about Twilio is how Twilio pretends they invented all these features and is a really innovative company. I thought your comments and "tip of the hat" to Voxeo and Tropo on innovative features at ITExpo west was the first time Twilio has publicly been a bit honest about this. I'm honestly disappointed to see you may be returning to Twilio the party line. I hope that's not the case.

-Jonathan (CEO, Voxeo)

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#49

Post by monhoppy »

asanwal wrote: post #15
tomjen3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is that they don't lie about their content.

Personalization of this type is pretty common in marketing communications of all types (direct mail, emails, etc). Calling it a lie seems a stretch.

I think it's the 'Re:' that feels like a lie, since it's not a reply to a user email.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#50

Post by visionik »

sachinag wrote: post #30
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.

Absolutely agree.

Twilio is great at marketing and evangelism. Twilio is way ahead on that front. That's their DNA.

Voxeo is great at feature innovation and platform implementation. Voxeo is way ahead on that front. That's Voxeo's DNA.

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