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Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

phonejanitor.com

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Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#41

Post by caseysoftware »

traverseda wrote: post #36
TodPunk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair reluctance and I can't take it away because at the end of the day you'll just have that lock-in with anyone. Such is the nature of telco lines. I have the same problem (having carried my home phone line through multiple stacks). What I can say is that I can cover costs out of pocket every month indefinitely (because each user covers their telco costs of that line, I'm just covering infrastructure) and m…

This is based on twilio? Any thoughts on going open source?

I did a version of this a couple years back: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/03/building-beyond-google-v...

It's rough but worked reliably.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#42

Post by ArekDymalski »

tghw wrote: post #39

Why this over Twilio? As far as I can tell, this does what Twilio does, but they're much bigger and more established. With my setup, inbound business calls get routed to the right person during the day, an automated message if we can't pick up at the moment, and a different message outside of business hours. Outbound calls from our personal numbers get forwarded through the business number our numbers aren't exposed.…

>It all takes less than 70 lines of Python/Flask.

It's for people who can't write those 70 lines/don't know about Twilio/associate Python with an animal.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#43

Post by tghw »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #42
tghw wrote: post #39

Why this over Twilio? As far as I can tell, this does what Twilio does, but they're much bigger and more established. With my setup, inbound business calls get routed to the right person during the day, an automated message if we can't pick up at the moment, and a different message outside of business hours. Outbound calls from our personal numbers get forwarded through the business number our numbers aren't exposed.…

>It all takes less than 70 lines of Python/Flask. It's for people who can't write those 70 lines/don't know about Twilio/associate Python with an animal.

> Use our public API to develop your own controls for your phone

I don't understand how it's supposed to be used aside from the API. They say "from the browser", but without examples, it's impossible to tell how much control you have without writing code.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#44

Post by curun1r »

frogpelt wrote: post #3

They don't readily advertise it, but the cost appears to be $15 per month (per number ?).

That seems like a lot, considering I can do basically the same thing with a ton of flexibility using Twilio. At $1/mo + very reasonable per minute charges, you'd have to spend well over 1000 minutes/mo on the phone before the $15/mo becomes cheaper.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#45

Post by TodPunk »

traverseda wrote: post #36
TodPunk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair reluctance and I can't take it away because at the end of the day you'll just have that lock-in with anyone. Such is the nature of telco lines. I have the same problem (having carried my home phone line through multiple stacks). What I can say is that I can cover costs out of pocket every month indefinitely (because each user covers their telco costs of that line, I'm just covering infrastructure) and m…

This is based on twilio? Any thoughts on going open source?

It is not based on Twilio, they're quite expensive, it's built on Freeswitch and normal fully open SIP/RTP protocols and what we're doing isn't exactly complex yet. I don't have a whole lot of care about going open source or not but as far as our interface you can view source at https://phonejanitor.com/app/ and you might be pleased for the moment.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#47

Post by pmtarantino »

aresant wrote: post #34

I think it's a stroke of genius to launch something so aesthetically terrible on HN / PH (aka the early adopter crowd). For a group of people that see a dozen bootstrap / sandwhich vid style launches a week this stands out, and got me to read 3 paragraphs of ad-copy. Other notable examples of this launch strategy, intentional or not, in recent memory were Pud launching DistroKid (1) and the team behind Magic (2) I th…

I think Tarsnap is another example of this.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#48

Post by miles »

TodPunk wrote: post #45
traverseda wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on twilio? Any thoughts on going open source?

It is not based on Twilio, they're quite expensive, it's built on Freeswitch and normal fully open SIP/RTP protocols and what we're doing isn't exactly complex yet. I don't have a whole lot of care about going open source or not but as far as our interface you can view source at https://phonejanitor.com/app/ and you might be pleased for the moment.

> It is not based on Twilio, they're quite expensive, it's built on Freeswitch ... I don't have a whole lot of care about open source

Please pardon me for saying so, but it seems like you do care about open source, or at least leveraging it to save your business money.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#50

Post by manishsharan »

Remember the lady in texas who committed suicide? Those friends she tried to contact but couldn't reach feel horrible about missing her call.

The problem with a service like this is that it will block calls from friends and family who are not whitelisted. Not to mention those dreaded emergency calls made by family members using a borrowed phone or public phone.

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