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Was going to post the same thing. I wonder how the two compare. Pricing-wise, seems like Twilio has higher fixed but lower usage costs: https://www.twilio.com

Was going to post the same thing. I wonder how the two compare. Pricing-wise, seems like Twilio has higher fixed but lower usage costs: https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim | Starting at $2 per active Super SIM per month. | Data Usage - Starting at $0.10 / MB. https://hologram.io/pricing/ https://hologram.io/pricing/ | $1 per device per month + $0.38 / MB. Of course these prices depend on device volume. Twilio may be able to offer lower costs because of their scale, but perhaps Hologram can provide a better user experience because this is the only thing they do.

kimi 6y ago
I'm frankly appalled at $0.10/MB. Are we still in the 90's?
- vertex-four 6y ago
  These devices are essentially roaming wherever they are. The use case is that you're sending far smaller data than a megabyte in even a day - maybe a GPS update once an hour, that sort of thing.
- thrwaway69 6y ago
  A single visit to one of the apple's product landing page would cost - $5. Doesn't seem too bad to me.
- Ductapemaster 6y ago
  I work for an IoT company, and I can tell you that data costs are high for IoT because the cost model is different. You purchase a 10GB plan from AT&T for your cell phone and they know that you likely won't use it all, so they can "oversell" data. With IoT, you have a much better handle on how much data you use so when you purchase a 10MB plan, they know you will use almost all of it. Additionally, IoT devices tend to have higher backend infrastructure costs as they often connect/disconnect from the towers as they wake up and go to sleep, or move around between towers /carriers a lot. Plus the "always roaming" statement above adds cost in exchange for flexibility. It's just a different business altogether.
  - henryfjordan 6y ago
    ATT offers an "unlimited" plan on their website right now with 100gb of "premium" (read unthrottled) data for $85/mo (goes down to $50 if you want 4 lines). Twillio is charging >10x the rate per-byte. ($1e-8 / byte compared to the $1e-9 that ATT charges). I don't know about you, but I use more than 1/10th of my data plan every month.
    - alasdair_ 6y ago
      >Twillio is charging >10x the rate per-byte. If you want to compare ATT to this offering, it would be fair to compare how much ATT for a single megabyte of pay-as-you-go international data. That price is $2.05 according to https://upgradedpoints.com/att-international-phone-plans/#:~:text=AT%26T%20will%20let%20you%20use,per%20megabyte%20in%20most%20countries https://upgradedpoints.com/att-international-phone-plans/#:~.... They also won't give you a line for $2/month.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      If you go to AT&T and say "I want 10,000 SIMs that'll let me use a few kilobytes of data a day, with enterprise management features", they either won't sell them to you or will sell them at prices comparable to Twilio (except they won't work when out of range of an AT&T tower, and certainly won't work overseas). Their minimum pay-as-you-go plan that includes any data at all seems to be about $30/mo - if you're using maybe 10 kilobytes a day, that's not feasible.
      - owowow 6y ago
        AT&T's IoT pricing seems to undercut Twilio and Hologram on price: https://marketplace.att.com/products/att-iot-dataplans-lte-north-america https://marketplace.att.com/products/att-iot-dataplans-lte-n... This platform has been around for at least 4 years iirc.
        Dwolb 6y ago
        It’s showing $1.50/MB and $22/GB and it’s a network configuration that is AT&T except in areas that don’t have service it’ll allow regional carriers and TMo. Hologram SIMs are price competitive here and allow devices to connect to the best network available without unfavorable network preference schemes. Definitely difficult to parse.
ProZsolt 6y ago
For hologram.io it's $1.50/SIM + $0.40/MB under 100 devices, but only $0.65/SIM + $0.33/MB over 5000
- Dwolb 6y ago
  These are just self-service pricing options to get people started on Day 1. When we price custom for enterprise (i.e. specific countries, carriers, roll-out plan), the pricing becomes a lot more flexible. Should be seeing updates to that messaging soon.

kimi 6y ago

I'm frankly appalled at $0.10/MB. Are we still in the 90's?

vertex-four 6y ago
These devices are essentially roaming wherever they are. The use case is that you're sending far smaller data than a megabyte in even a day - maybe a GPS update once an hour, that sort of thing.
thrwaway69 6y ago
A single visit to one of the apple's product landing page would cost - $5. Doesn't seem too bad to me.
Ductapemaster 6y ago
I work for an IoT company, and I can tell you that data costs are high for IoT because the cost model is different. You purchase a 10GB plan from AT&T for your cell phone and they know that you likely won't use it all, so they can "oversell" data. With IoT, you have a much better handle on how much data you use so when you purchase a 10MB plan, they know you will use almost all of it. Additionally, IoT devices tend to have higher backend infrastructure costs as they often connect/disconnect from the towers as they wake up and go to sleep, or move around between towers /carriers a lot. Plus the "always roaming" statement above adds cost in exchange for flexibility. It's just a different business altogether.
- henryfjordan 6y ago
  ATT offers an "unlimited" plan on their website right now with 100gb of "premium" (read unthrottled) data for $85/mo (goes down to $50 if you want 4 lines). Twillio is charging >10x the rate per-byte. ($1e-8 / byte compared to the $1e-9 that ATT charges). I don't know about you, but I use more than 1/10th of my data plan every month.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    >Twillio is charging >10x the rate per-byte. If you want to compare ATT to this offering, it would be fair to compare how much ATT for a single megabyte of pay-as-you-go international data. That price is $2.05 according to https://upgradedpoints.com/att-international-phone-plans/#:~:text=AT%26T%20will%20let%20you%20use,per%20megabyte%20in%20most%20countries https://upgradedpoints.com/att-international-phone-plans/#:~.... They also won't give you a line for $2/month.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    If you go to AT&T and say "I want 10,000 SIMs that'll let me use a few kilobytes of data a day, with enterprise management features", they either won't sell them to you or will sell them at prices comparable to Twilio (except they won't work when out of range of an AT&T tower, and certainly won't work overseas). Their minimum pay-as-you-go plan that includes any data at all seems to be about $30/mo - if you're using maybe 10 kilobytes a day, that's not feasible.
    - owowow 6y ago
      AT&T's IoT pricing seems to undercut Twilio and Hologram on price: https://marketplace.att.com/products/att-iot-dataplans-lte-north-america https://marketplace.att.com/products/att-iot-dataplans-lte-n... This platform has been around for at least 4 years iirc.
      - Dwolb 6y ago
        It’s showing $1.50/MB and $22/GB and it’s a network configuration that is AT&T except in areas that don’t have service it’ll allow regional carriers and TMo. Hologram SIMs are price competitive here and allow devices to connect to the best network available without unfavorable network preference schemes. Definitely difficult to parse.

ProZsolt 6y ago

For hologram.io it's $1.50/SIM + $0.40/MB under 100 devices, but only $0.65/SIM + $0.33/MB over 5000

Dwolb 6y ago
These are just self-service pricing options to get people started on Day 1. When we price custom for enterprise (i.e. specific countries, carriers, roll-out plan), the pricing becomes a lot more flexible. Should be seeing updates to that messaging soon.