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Why choose Tropo over Twilio

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Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#61

Post by akalsey »

stanleydrew wrote: post #47
akalsey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fair enough. But if it takes 4 hours to figure out how to write these two lines of code, something's wrong. Documentation, complicated and confusing API, hard onramp to get started...

Our goal is to get a developer who knows nothing about telephony from signup to making their first phone calls and text messages in under 5 minutes.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#62

Post by abhiyerra »

jdee wrote: post #12
ra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 / whate…

I get your point, but feel you are overplaying the difficulty. You can code in plain ol javascript on freeswitch to create complex inbound and outbound comms apps in a couple of hours. Plug it into a sip provider ( i use sipgate ) and there is nothing more complex to it. Far far cheaper too. You dont need a bunch of servers either. If you are doing more than 200 simultaneous calls ( freeswitch easily achieves this on…

Unfortunately, you can't get SMS when you do it yourself using SIP/FreeSwitch. These companies have made the deals with the individual telecom providers to do that for each of their DID numbers.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#63

Post by akalsey »

abhiyerra wrote: post #62
jdee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, but feel you are overplaying the difficulty. You can code in plain ol javascript on freeswitch to create complex inbound and outbound comms apps in a couple of hours. Plug it into a sip provider ( i use sipgate ) and there is nothing more complex to it. Far far cheaper too. You dont need a bunch of servers either. If you are doing more than 200 simultaneous calls ( freeswitch easily achieves this on…

Unfortunately, you can't get SMS when you do it yourself using SIP/FreeSwitch. These companies have made the deals with the individual telecom providers to do that for each of their DID numbers.

Well, you could it's just not easy. A GSM modem attached to the server would do the trick.

Apache's free and hardware's cheap. Yet Rackspace still manages to run a huge web hosting business.

For some people and some uses, building a web server and hosting it on your home or office network is acceptable. But those that don't count "web hosting" as their core business and want the reliability, security, and stability that comes from having a professional do it tend to hire a company to do it for them.

Like most other things in technology, it's a simple build-vs-buy question. Is it more cost effective and better suited to my needs to build it myself or to buy from someone who's an expert?

Freeswitch and Asterisk are great. I was the emcee at the Freeswitch developer conference last year and we financially support Adhearsion, an Asterisk development framwork. They fill a great niche for DIY telephony. For everyone else, there's hosted services.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#64

Post by mgkimsal »

danielle17 wrote: post #21
mgkimsal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for addressing that.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#65

Post by mgkimsal »

visionik wrote: post #45
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…

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 sin…

If it was really that easy a decade ago why was there no marketing done to reach people like me?

Show me pricing lists and contracts from 10 years ago indicating it was cheap as Twilio was 2 years ago. I can't see anything at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://voxeo.com :(

I suspect the infrastructure was there for the 'big boys' and that indie devs and 2-3 man shops who wanted this sort of functionality were ignored in favor of 'enterprise' development shops and projects.

OK - rereading your post here - yes, you got 'distracted' by big deals. But it's the focus on getting the basic fundamentals as easy for people to use as possible which has created the Twilio loyalty and fandom they have relative to voxeo/tropo.

Twilio has (imo) about a year to add some more features that people are asking for before people jump ship. They should not waste that goodwill and rest on their laurels. But it's going to be easier for them to grow their success with smaller shops and indies in to something larger as those smaller shops and projects grow to larger needs than it is for 'enterprise'-focused groups to prove to the smaller players that they 'get' the independent developer market.

You can suggest that this is 'just' marketing/evangelism. I suspect it's a bit more - a focused simplicity on getting a few core things down first rather than trying to offer multiple services on day one. That doesn't appeal to everyone, but I think it's helped more than hurt in Twilio's case. Simply by having more options up front you're forcing people to have to learn a lot more about stuff on your terms when making an evaluation. For example, Tropo's APIs - 'webapi' vs 'scripting'. Huh? What are the differences? I don't find an adequate explanation of the strengths/weaknesses of each model.

Both services have their place, but developing a rabid fanbase will serve Twilio better longer term as opposed to pure technical superiority.

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#67

Post by prakster »

Has anyone compared Tropo and Twilio in these 3 areas:

(a) Speed of SMS deliverability (# of SMS that can be delivered per minute)

(b) Confirmation of SMS (i.e. can we be sure that the SMS was indeed delivered)

(c) Availability of phone numbers in different area codes

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#68

Post by SriniK »

visionik wrote: post #55
hopeless wrote: post #7

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…

Thank you for a great summary of Tropo advantages! -Jonathan (CEO, Voxeo)

Do you guys consider giving sms bulk discount? Like a tiered pricing?

Re: Why choose Tropo over Twilio

#70

Post by danielle17 »

akalsey wrote: post #60
danielle17 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's stretched? That is very different from saying, as you did above, that "This quote is completely fabricated." (it also wasn't a quote). I'm not trying to start a flame war here. I like you (and the rest of Twilio) quite a bit. I admired what you said and the goal it represented: Focus on and attack a different market from a different angle than we are. Build on your strengths and acknowledge your weaknesses. I wi…

I don't know how saying "Danielle Morrill said" is not a quote. But let the audience here, and the future, judge whether or not we "keep up". I think time will tell.
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