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Prove: Phone verification for developers
- makerops 13y agoI think you can charge a lot more than 5c for this service. I think developers tend to think about margins as it relates to the service that the app is built on (this case twilio). Even though they charge 1c per text, you need to base your pricing on what a verified phone number is worth to someone using the service. If a verified number is worth 10$, you can probably charge more like 20-30% of that (maybe more). I'm just regurgitating: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/19/productizing-twilio-applications/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/19/productizing-twilio-appl...
- moxie 13y agoBut the target customers are developers. If this is simply a productized Twilio API, then it's not a huge time savings for a developer. If you need to verify users, it means your app is structured such that there's already a back end, and you already need to store a user record. Generating a random number, putting it in the user record, and calling a Twilio API isn't really a huge drag.
- tnorthcutt 13y ago"Developers don't pay for stuff!" (they do)
- tlrobinson 13y agoBut do they pay 5x for a relatively thin layer on top of Twilio (or similar service)?
- williamldennis 13y agoWe're building verification ourselves but 5c seems expensive. If it's a consumer product (like WhatsApp) then 5c per user gets pricey quickly.
- niftylettuce 13y agowe give discounts and there is volume pricing too. support@getprove.com we simplified the entire process so you can integrate this within minutes and then down the road -- u could build your own solution if needed
- mrilhan 13y agoGetting this: Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): SSL protocol error.
- niftylettuce 13y agoedit: see above comment, problem was redistogo
- simonw 13y agoSuggestion: use varnish. That way you can easily absorb massive spikes in logged-out GET traffic (such as that caused by being on Hacker News).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Tomdarkness 13y agoStill getting the same SSL error, although it now alternates between that and ERR_CONNECTION_RESET.
- benjamincburns 13y agoConsidering DNS propagation, is "real quick" even possible? You might do better to take a bit of a cost hit and work within AWS. Assuming you're set up with an Elastic IP, maybe spin up another instance and an Elastic Load Balancer? Edit: Either way, whatever you did it seems to be back up (at least for me).
- jaredstenquist 13y agoI built something thing like this using Twillio for my Caller ID test tool. Visiting the site creates a unique pin number and you have to call in and enter it. http://www.calleridtest.com http://www.calleridtest.com Twillio makes the development of things like this a breeze.
- ldubinets 13y agoThe css isn't loading. Seems HN has broken yet another website. Congratulations!
- niftylettuce 13y agoyea thats EC2 for you, should have had assets on s3/cloudfront like always... wasn't expecting this
- toomuchtodo 13y agoNo one expects the Hacker News inquisition! Always always always host the static bits in S3/Cloudfront or some other piece of machinery that can spit them out quick when you show your work off.
- niftylettuce 13y agothey are on S3/Cloudfront now. migrating the last of the assets such as fonts currently.
- toddhd 13y agoThis looks like a cool service, and I am starting on a new project that might benefit from something like this. But the page failed to load 3 times, and the 4th time it took about 10 minutes to load. Maybe you are just getting overloaded from HN visitors, but still, that's a problem. Do you also offer this as a service that can be implemented natively from another application? In other words, I'd rather not go to your homepage to do this, I'd prefer the customer add his/her information on my website, and have the processes automated with the results sent to me.
- niftylettuce 13y agoedit: EC2 was slow at first, but problem was redistogo
- Deestan 13y agoAs someone about to use EC2 for some heavy servers, I would appreciate if you could tell me: a) How huge an EC2 instance do you have? b) What tech are you serving from? Express, ASP, JSP, etc...
- niftylettuce 13y agoa) large instance b) express/node the core problem was redistogo, not primarily ec2, though someone else takes up a lot of CPU on my shared instance
- moxie 13y agoThis is one of the biggest headaches I have as a developer of two mobile apps that require number verification. But the headache isn't because the twilio/nexmo/clickatell/etc APIs are too complex, or because I don't want to deal with adding a single verification code column to a user record in the DB schema, but because the delivery success rates for the SMS gateways I've been using are quite bad. Most of my time is spent trying to figure out which mobile networks which SMS gateways will deliver best to, and then directing the correct verification traffic through those gateways accordingly. Which is a nightmare, in part because the successful delivery rates for different areas and networks constantly changes. If this is the problem that Prove is solving, I think emphasizing that (or at least mentioning it somewhere) on the website is important. I would be an eager customer.
- EGreg 13y agoWhy don't you just use Twilio or something? It doesn't deliver to all mobile phones on US carriers?
- niftylettuce 13y agowe're powered by Twilio right now
- subsystem 13y agoThis is pretty basic, but helped me somewhat: http://www.scribd.com/doc/97294264/Nexmo-SMS-Deliverability-Guide http://www.scribd.com/doc/97294264/Nexmo-SMS-Deliverability-...
- tjlytle 13y agoNexmo also provides deliverability statistics: https://dashboard.nexmo.com/ratios/public https://dashboard.nexmo.com/ratios/public
- tjlytle 13y agoDisclaimer: I do a bit of part time dev evang for Nexmo. Nexmo should be pretty good across the board as it pertains to what delivers best (direct to carrier model: http://blog.nexmo.com/post/4690069179/directsms http://blog.nexmo.com/post/4690069179/directsms). In that way, Nexmo is trying to solve the issue you're having. Have you had any issues with deliverability and Nexmo (where another provider delivered better)? Nexmo actually provides some tools to automatically optimize traffic based on client conversion ratios.
- krosaen 13y agoDoesn't Duo Security do this really well already? https://www.duosecurity.com/docs/duoweb https://www.duosecurity.com/docs/duoweb Once I can load the webpage will be interested to see if there are any differentiating features that make it easier to get started as a developer.
- moxie 13y agoDuo is for two factor authentication, where my impression is that this is for signup verification. Consider mobile apps like WhatsApp, which use your existing mobile number as your identifier. This makes a lot of sense for a bunch of reasons, but it requires the app to somehow verify that the number you enter is actually your number. This is commonly done by having the service send a verification code in an SMS, which you then enter back into the app.
- trhaynes 13y agoDuo's "Verify API" does just that: https://www.duosecurity.com/docs/duoverify https://www.duosecurity.com/docs/duoverify
- tallanvor 13y agoUnless you plan on developing an app with less than 10 users, Duo Security seems like it would be a very expensive option for most apps.
- jasonlotito 13y ago10 years later, and this is still a challenge. My biggest regret is not taking this technology and putting an API behind it and offering it up. Oh well.
- benjamincburns 13y ago> Oh well. Why "oh well?" Not to be pedantic, but if it's your biggest regret, what's stopping you?
- smarx 13y agoFYI, one of the examples we wrote for Webscript does simple mobile phone verification: https://www.webscript.io/examples/mobileverification https://www.webscript.io/examples/mobileverification We thought about building something like this as a paid service, but we didn't think it could be very profitable.
- niftylettuce 13y agoOkay, the problem wasn't EC2. The problem was Redistogo. Everything fixed. https://getprove.com https://getprove.com
- Blahah 13y agoSSL error
- niftylettuce 13y agoshould be up now, maybe your DNS is taking a bit, try again in a few minutes i migrated assets to CDN, but still transferring some now, so fonts might now show up yet :)
- jtchang 13y agoSaving this to try it out later.
- EGreg 13y agoThis is definitely cool, but it's just one thing that any "social framework" would do. Verifying emails or verifying mobile phones is a basic step in any user signup.
- guyht 13y agoFYI, your lock icon is not showing up for me, you may want to check your encoding.
- nwh 13y agoNor for me on OSX / Chrome 28.0.1500.20.
- niftylettuce 13y agoicons work now.
- niftylettuce 13y agoyeah im putting the fonts on a CDN right now, one sec
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mzs 13y agoThis is a bit off topic, but I don't own a cellphone and the verify via SMS trend is starting to worry me. It would be better if it had an option where it called and used text to speech for the autogenerated pin, but I probably would not give my phone number to the vast majority of sites anyway.
- niftylettuce 13y agoyou can do this. just click "Call me" instead of "Text me" on the demo on "How it works"
- tghw 13y agoGet a Google Voice number. They can accept SMS messages that are forwarded to your email address.
- Lexarius 13y agoYou might want to look into getting a prepaid phone of some kind, even if it's not a smart phone. Having a portable emergency communication device seems like a good idea even if you're opposed (for whatever reason) to cellphone use in general, and a prepaid phone won't give you monthly bills or contracts to worry about. If that's no good, then how about Google Voice? In addition to its other useful phone-related features, it allows sending and receiving of text messages.
- mzs 13y agoMy wife and I used to have tracfones. I just went and pulled mine out of the box here. It only says motorola on it, no model number or anything other than that. I really liked that phone, it was simple, great battery life, and got reception where others did not. What I did not like is that I paid more than $200 for them and about a year later tracphone said they would no longer work on the phone networks here. What a colossal waste of money that was. I'll keep spending my money on tools in case of emergencies. My wife does have an iphone with a contract now though. Maybe I should do the google voice thing though, good suggestion, thanks.
- guyht 13y agoSignup is broken. When I try to sign up for an account I get an error "User already exists". This is the case for any email address I enter.
- niftylettuce 13y agothanks for letting me know, hang on. EDIT: SIGN UP WORKING
- rogerbinns 13y agoI use Google Voice where possible, and especially for SMS. Regular SMS to/from my phone costs 20c per message (usual US carrier nonsense). I've found that most places that claim to send SMS fail to send to Google Voice, and provide no diagnostics that they failed. Given SMS supports receipt notification that is a strange.
- jonemo 13y agoI have the same headache with Google Voice not receiving most confirmation SMS and was delighted to see that the test SMS I just sent using this service came through. Well done!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]