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This has been kicked around for a really long time and I'm happy they finally launched it. Around 2013 or so, one of the junior engineers on the Twilio Voice t

This has been kicked around for a really long time and I'm happy they finally launched it. Around 2013 or so, one of the junior engineers on the Twilio Voice team pitched his innovation week project with a single slide saying "Fax: The time is now." The time has finally arrived! Congrats John.

tyingq 10y ago
Guessing this will kill Phaxio. Compare the pricing: https://www.twilio.com/fax/pricing https://www.twilio.com/fax/pricing https://www.phaxio.com/pricing/ https://www.phaxio.com/pricing/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  it's amazing that phaxio have gotten away with such high prices for so long.
  - robbiemitchell 10y ago
    All the eFax providers have been doing this.
    - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
      When your user-base is comprised of doctors, lawyers and blue-chip companies with ancient business processes you can get away with charging what you like.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        And when your user base is developers without knowledge of the underlying fundamentals, you can charge how Twilio does. The knife, it cuts both ways. Until you know the use case, pricing is a nebulous concept.
  - rory096 10y ago
    I'm not sure the Phaxio pricing is all that much higher than Twilio. They're covering failed faxes, cancelled faxes, faxes that require multiple retries, and faxes that just take a long time — only charging per page delivered. Those will all eat up minutes that you'll pay for with Twilio. In any case, their pricing model has been far preferable to their old competitor, Interfax: https://www.interfax.net/en/prices https://www.interfax.net/en/prices
    - kelnos 10y ago
      We (Twilio) are also only charging for successful delivery. Failures to not incur any billing. Retry is (currently) on the customer to implement, but since we don't charge for failures, that doesn't affect cost. Yes, we're charging per-minute fees, but for US, at least, it's sub-1-cent, and with my testing so far, I haven't seen it go more than a couple minutes per page for something fairly complex, and that's worst case.
      - tyingq 10y ago
        Someone else in this business says they see 1 minute for 1 page faxes, but faster for longer faxes...Because the first page has the initial handshake. http://www.faxage.com/learn_faxing_by_minutes_versus_faxing_by_pages.php http://www.faxage.com/learn_faxing_by_minutes_versus_faxing_... I'm sure some pages take longer, but it doesn't seem odd that most pages aren't complex.
  - rabidonrails 10y ago
    Phaxio founder here. Our pricing might seem higher (and may be in certain situations), but it works a bit differently that Twilio's. Twilio charges you the 1c _plus_ the costs of the call. Phaxio is an "all in" rate _including_ retrying the call. And, at Phaxio, if the calls all fail there's no cost to you. I'm not saying that we won't adjust our pricing (#competition), but there's a difference in the actual unit cost.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      How long does it take, on average, to send a page?
    - IgorPartola 10y ago
      How long does it take to send a page of fax? Their pricing is 0.007 per minute. I haven't seen many fax machines take more than a minute per page, but they would have to take 10 minutes to catch up to your pricing. Edit: Fixed time to comparable pricing.
      - rabidonrails 10y ago
        Quick answer is that it depends on what's on the page. It can be as quick as a minute or significantly longer if there are images or lots of data the page.
        IgorPartola 10y ago
        That's fair but how many pages take more than 10 minutes?
      - kelnos 10y ago
        I'd be surprised to see more than a couple minutes for even a complicated fax page. I've seen 45-70 seconds average for a not-too-complicated page. It also depends on the baud rate (never thought that term would come back, eh?) negotiated between both ends. A 14400 baud transmission will of course be faster than 9600.
  - nck4222 10y ago
    After reading these arguments I was expecting something in the range of dollars per fax. Is 7 cents per page really that much? I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff, but are there really that many places out there faxing thousands of pages where 7 cents per page vs 5 cents per page is really going to make a difference for them?
    - tyingq 10y ago
      There isn't consensus on the 5 cents per page part. Some think it is closer to 3. If that's true, generally, I'm concerned if a competitor launches at less than half my price. Even if it is 5 cents, that's a 30% discount, which seems significant.
    - dublidu 10y ago
      It makes a difference at high volumes.
- kevinburke 10y ago
  Rumors of the demise of telecom services based on their competitors' feature set and pricing are greatly exaggerated. https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/six-years-of-hacker-news-comments-about-twilio/ https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/six-years-of-hacker-news-comme...
  - tyingq 10y ago
    This is a smaller, more niche market though. Not just the "fax" or "online fax", but specifically "fax API" slice. There are not many players.
- Thieum22 10y ago
  Some of our customers have been using foiply : https://www.foiply.com/pricing-monthly/ https://www.foiply.com/pricing-monthly/ The difference in pricing will certainly make them consider a switch.
carlosdp 10y ago
Actually though! This has been an internal meme since then, there's been PRs for implementing it just hanging around for years =P I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't an April Fools joke. Congrats Twilio!
- kelnos 10y ago
  Depends on what time zone you're in ;)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jenamety 10y ago
I have previously integrated with eFax in 2010, so an internet fax provider is not new to me, but forgive my ignorance as I haven't visited the space in a while. Which innovation are you excited about and referring to? From the comments it seems to be 'developer friendly API' or 'Simplicity in pricing' as the to big draws, just curious what has changed since my last days?
- pyre 10y ago
  Being "developer-friendly" can be a big draw. Take Stripe for example. It's an HTTP API with bindings in a number of languages. Previously I worked with a payment processor that required we run some sort of Java application even though we weren't a Java shop. Someone had to setup a way to wrap the Java application to interface with the payment processor (not even getting into the issue that now we have to deal with running a JVM-based application). Some companies are actively developer hostile in their interfaces.
briankwest 10y ago
Or download FreeSWITCH and roll your own. :)

tyingq 10y ago

Guessing this will kill Phaxio. Compare the pricing: https://www.twilio.com/fax/pricing https://www.twilio.com/fax/pricing https://www.phaxio.com/pricing/ https://www.phaxio.com/pricing/

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
beaconstudios 10y ago
it's amazing that phaxio have gotten away with such high prices for so long.
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  All the eFax providers have been doing this.
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    When your user-base is comprised of doctors, lawyers and blue-chip companies with ancient business processes you can get away with charging what you like.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      And when your user base is developers without knowledge of the underlying fundamentals, you can charge how Twilio does. The knife, it cuts both ways. Until you know the use case, pricing is a nebulous concept.
- rory096 10y ago
  I'm not sure the Phaxio pricing is all that much higher than Twilio. They're covering failed faxes, cancelled faxes, faxes that require multiple retries, and faxes that just take a long time — only charging per page delivered. Those will all eat up minutes that you'll pay for with Twilio. In any case, their pricing model has been far preferable to their old competitor, Interfax: https://www.interfax.net/en/prices https://www.interfax.net/en/prices
  - kelnos 10y ago
    We (Twilio) are also only charging for successful delivery. Failures to not incur any billing. Retry is (currently) on the customer to implement, but since we don't charge for failures, that doesn't affect cost. Yes, we're charging per-minute fees, but for US, at least, it's sub-1-cent, and with my testing so far, I haven't seen it go more than a couple minutes per page for something fairly complex, and that's worst case.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      Someone else in this business says they see 1 minute for 1 page faxes, but faster for longer faxes...Because the first page has the initial handshake. http://www.faxage.com/learn_faxing_by_minutes_versus_faxing_by_pages.php http://www.faxage.com/learn_faxing_by_minutes_versus_faxing_... I'm sure some pages take longer, but it doesn't seem odd that most pages aren't complex.
- rabidonrails 10y ago
  Phaxio founder here. Our pricing might seem higher (and may be in certain situations), but it works a bit differently that Twilio's. Twilio charges you the 1c _plus_ the costs of the call. Phaxio is an "all in" rate _including_ retrying the call. And, at Phaxio, if the calls all fail there's no cost to you. I'm not saying that we won't adjust our pricing (#competition), but there's a difference in the actual unit cost.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    How long does it take, on average, to send a page?
  - IgorPartola 10y ago
    How long does it take to send a page of fax? Their pricing is 0.007 per minute. I haven't seen many fax machines take more than a minute per page, but they would have to take 10 minutes to catch up to your pricing. Edit: Fixed time to comparable pricing.
    - rabidonrails 10y ago
      Quick answer is that it depends on what's on the page. It can be as quick as a minute or significantly longer if there are images or lots of data the page.
      - IgorPartola 10y ago
        That's fair but how many pages take more than 10 minutes?
    - kelnos 10y ago
      I'd be surprised to see more than a couple minutes for even a complicated fax page. I've seen 45-70 seconds average for a not-too-complicated page. It also depends on the baud rate (never thought that term would come back, eh?) negotiated between both ends. A 14400 baud transmission will of course be faster than 9600.
- nck4222 10y ago
  After reading these arguments I was expecting something in the range of dollars per fax. Is 7 cents per page really that much? I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff, but are there really that many places out there faxing thousands of pages where 7 cents per page vs 5 cents per page is really going to make a difference for them?
  - tyingq 10y ago
    There isn't consensus on the 5 cents per page part. Some think it is closer to 3. If that's true, generally, I'm concerned if a competitor launches at less than half my price. Even if it is 5 cents, that's a 30% discount, which seems significant.
  - dublidu 10y ago
    It makes a difference at high volumes.
kevinburke 10y ago
Rumors of the demise of telecom services based on their competitors' feature set and pricing are greatly exaggerated. https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/six-years-of-hacker-news-comments-about-twilio/ https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/six-years-of-hacker-news-comme...
- tyingq 10y ago
  This is a smaller, more niche market though. Not just the "fax" or "online fax", but specifically "fax API" slice. There are not many players.
Thieum22 10y ago
Some of our customers have been using foiply : https://www.foiply.com/pricing-monthly/ https://www.foiply.com/pricing-monthly/ The difference in pricing will certainly make them consider a switch.

carlosdp 10y ago

Actually though! This has been an internal meme since then, there's been PRs for implementing it just hanging around for years =P I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't an April Fools joke. Congrats Twilio!

kelnos 10y ago
Depends on what time zone you're in ;)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jenamety 10y ago

I have previously integrated with eFax in 2010, so an internet fax provider is not new to me, but forgive my ignorance as I haven't visited the space in a while. Which innovation are you excited about and referring to? From the comments it seems to be 'developer friendly API' or 'Simplicity in pricing' as the to big draws, just curious what has changed since my last days?

pyre 10y ago
Being "developer-friendly" can be a big draw. Take Stripe for example. It's an HTTP API with bindings in a number of languages. Previously I worked with a payment processor that required we run some sort of Java application even though we weren't a Java shop. Someone had to setup a way to wrap the Java application to interface with the payment processor (not even getting into the issue that now we have to deal with running a JVM-based application). Some companies are actively developer hostile in their interfaces.

briankwest 10y ago

Or download FreeSWITCH and roll your own. :)