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I wish Twilio had free offerings for their other services. I didnt even dare playing around testing Twilio because I would be getting charged 2 cents per SMS se

by ryanar 9y ago

I wish Twilio had free offerings for their other services. I didnt even dare playing around testing Twilio because I would be getting charged 2 cents per SMS sent

keithwhor 9y ago
The truth of the matter is if you have a hard time paying 2 cents to send a text message for a few beta / trial runs, you're probably not contributing to Twilio's bottom line in any reasonable fashion, and unfortunately, they don't care. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't afford to. If every engineer with a six-figure salary decided they would pay the couple bucks it costs to test drive a product, the customer long-tail for dev products would add up to something appreciable and as a result you might actually see a lot more innovation around dev tools. As it stands, one of the best developer products of our generation, Heroku, even had a hard time pricing / selling to their long tail and we saw shutdowns of great products like Parse. Twilio actually has a very reasonable model. $20 deposit, non-recurring, is way less than you'd spend on a Thursday night date, for example, and you get to build something with it. Hell, speaking of building, you've probably spent more on a Lego set. (I have. As an adult... for myself.) (What actually ends up happening is developer companies go full OSS, give everything away for free for massive adoption, then AWS figures out how to productize it and sell to Enterprise. You can trace the points from Docker's inception to AWS Lambda processing trillions of trades per day.)
- sjtgraham 9y ago
  Over 95% of Twilio's users don't meaningfully contribute to their bottom-line. Their revenue is a fat long-tail dominated by outliers. I'd say Twilio does care about every developer because they have no idea which customers will become outliers.
gbaygon 9y ago
they do have a testing environment where you can send SMS to only registered and verified phone numbers
- rajangdavis 9y ago
  I was just going to say this too. I just started working with it this last weekend and feels like magic. This is an amazing move on their part. I think this lowers the barrier to use their services and it was already stupid simple to set up. Well done!
  - gregorymichael 9y ago
    Love hearing that about that "magic" feeling. Want to drop me an email at gb@twilio.com and we'll shoot you a token of our appreciation?
gregorymichael 9y ago
Totally understand that concern. Our goal's always been to have Twilio be free (or really close to it) while your app is in development. We've got a trial account that will let you play around before spending any money. You'll only be able to text numbers that you've verified with us, but it should give you a feel for things (this is what the vast majority of students at Hackathons use). If you want to give it a try: twilio.com/try-twilio When you're ready to make the leap, $20 buys you about 2500 text messages in the US. (disclaimer: work on Developer Community team)
wedowhatwedo 9y ago
It sounds like you have no need for their service. If you had a need for the service, their pricing model is very good. Since you have no need for their service, not having your account on their system is best for Twilio.

by ryanar 9y ago

I wish Twilio had free offerings for their other services. I didnt even dare playing around testing Twilio because I would be getting charged 2 cents per SMS sent

keithwhor 9y ago

The truth of the matter is if you have a hard time paying 2 cents to send a text message for a few beta / trial runs, you're probably not contributing to Twilio's bottom line in any reasonable fashion, and unfortunately, they don't care. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't afford to. If every engineer with a six-figure salary decided they would pay the couple bucks it costs to test drive a product, the customer long-tail for dev products would add up to something appreciable and as a result you might actually see a lot more innovation around dev tools. As it stands, one of the best developer products of our generation, Heroku, even had a hard time pricing / selling to their long tail and we saw shutdowns of great products like Parse. Twilio actually has a very reasonable model. $20 deposit, non-recurring, is way less than you'd spend on a Thursday night date, for example, and you get to build something with it. Hell, speaking of building, you've probably spent more on a Lego set. (I have. As an adult... for myself.) (What actually ends up happening is developer companies go full OSS, give everything away for free for massive adoption, then AWS figures out how to productize it and sell to Enterprise. You can trace the points from Docker's inception to AWS Lambda processing trillions of trades per day.)

sjtgraham 9y ago
Over 95% of Twilio's users don't meaningfully contribute to their bottom-line. Their revenue is a fat long-tail dominated by outliers. I'd say Twilio does care about every developer because they have no idea which customers will become outliers.

gbaygon 9y ago

they do have a testing environment where you can send SMS to only registered and verified phone numbers

rajangdavis 9y ago
I was just going to say this too. I just started working with it this last weekend and feels like magic. This is an amazing move on their part. I think this lowers the barrier to use their services and it was already stupid simple to set up. Well done!
- gregorymichael 9y ago
  Love hearing that about that "magic" feeling. Want to drop me an email at gb@twilio.com and we'll shoot you a token of our appreciation?

gregorymichael 9y ago

Totally understand that concern. Our goal's always been to have Twilio be free (or really close to it) while your app is in development. We've got a trial account that will let you play around before spending any money. You'll only be able to text numbers that you've verified with us, but it should give you a feel for things (this is what the vast majority of students at Hackathons use). If you want to give it a try: twilio.com/try-twilio When you're ready to make the leap, $20 buys you about 2500 text messages in the US. (disclaimer: work on Developer Community team)

wedowhatwedo 9y ago

It sounds like you have no need for their service. If you had a need for the service, their pricing model is very good. Since you have no need for their service, not having your account on their system is best for Twilio.