Plivo (YC S12) launches scalable API platform for Voice & SMS Apps | Hacker News Reader

Plivo (YC S12) launches scalable API platform for Voice & SMS Apps

techcrunch.com

91 pointsalagu36 comments

"Plivo is not a direct competitor with developer-friendly Twilio, but is targeting larger businesses in need of scale."

I'm confused how this is different from Twilio - my understanding is that Twilio gets most of their revenue from large businesses in need of scale, as well.

This is a great question to ask the right people :)

If you get bored, could you explain what a carrier is in this context? AT&T? I presume you're the founder Venky?

Hey earl, yes i am one of the founders. Yes, carriers here would be AT&T or Level3 etc..

One of the features that I feel sets it apart from Twilio (but that admittedly isn't very well documented) is that you can configure an application to be direct-dial. In layman's terms, you can use Plivo via SIP for an internal phone system and configure how different numbers/extensions are handled when dialed from the SIP phone.

SIP support is a win for Plivo. I love Twilio and the overall constant innovation in the space, but inventing proprietary mechanisms (Twilio Client) is backwards for telephony.

Plivo is on the right track -- http://plivo.com/opensource. I'm excited to use this and watch them grow.

Even our hosted cloud supports SIP and we dont lock you in with our carriers. :)

Just talked with Rakesh via olark (very helpful) on the Plivo site. I do a lot of stuff with Twilio and after talking with him, it sounds like Plivo has some valid strengths and advantages.

Could you elaborate on what those advantages may be, for those of us who don't quite understand the difference?

Aaron,

I am on of the founders of Plivo. Let me share with you what we think is different:

1. Native SIP Support. Works with any SIP Device. 2. Realtime Call Control (like in-call notifications etc..) 3. No Limit Conferencing 4. No carrier Lock-in 5. Volume pricing from the start

If you have any questions, feel free to ping us at support@plivo.com

Venky, dumb question, but any idea if the call control can occur during a live call (two endpoints are connected instead of just one endpoint connected to plivo)? I'm trying to write an app that depends on this functionality but can't seem to do it in twilio or tropo.

Also, does plivo provide a softphone or client library?

Yes we can do that. Use our Transfer API and transfer both legs instead of just one :)

Soft phone library is in roadmap.

Hey all!

I run biz dev for 2600hz, a competitor in the Voice API space. What Plivo is doing is really cool for a couple of reasons:

1. Open-Source development framework

2. Lets you bring Non-Plivo carriers

I do have a couple observations, specifically adding the $.004 tariff onto carrier calls kills any real option for external carriers. For those of you who aren't in the Telecom game, a 4 tenths of a penny addition on every minute can make an arbitrage business model much more difficult.

Second, Plivo is not very open about the tools that they use to get where they are. This is built on FreeSWITCH, they are doing a basic implementation of this Open-Source software as the media server. This is also the underlying stuff powering UberConference so it's good stuff, but it's important to mention the giants upon whose shoulders you stand.

Lastly, on-net calls should be free. As of right now they're $.004 per min for full IP routing. That's bogus in my opinion.

Oh and by the way, everything you can do on Plivo can be run on 2600hz and our architecture is fully scalable with over 50 APIs for all of the Telecom functionality you'd ever want. Best of all, you can run your carriers, in your cloud, without paying us a dime.

Github: https://github.com/2600hz/2600hz-platform

Kazoo Beta: http://invite.kazoo.io

Source: I write thepbxblog.com and I work for 2600hz.

Edit: Grammar.

First you say "you are a competitor in the Voice API space", "and then you have a few issues with the way we do business", I didn't expect that at all ;)

Anyways, next time please do your homework first, we have openly announced on Techcrunch that FreeSWITCH powers our backend and we are also sponsors for Cluecon this year to give back in our own way.

Best of luck for your attempts in future.

Be,

I realize now that my statement might've come across a bit harsh; that wasn't my intention at all. I'm a fervent believer in Open-Source as a superior method of development, and I certainly didn't mean to insult you.

Perhaps it was an oversight on my part, but I didn't see FreeSWITCH on your website, nor did I see any reference to it on your .org page. Please forgive me if I've overlooked something.

As far as what we run, we run FreeSWITCH as a media server in our environment, but we also use a number of other great technologies like CouchDB (specifically BigCouch), RabbitMQ, OpenSIPS, and the whole thing is written in Erlang.

For my final comment, I'll simply say that the Voice space is too small and too familiar to have public fights. I think I speak for everyone at 2600hz when I say what you're doing advances the field of communications, I just feel that on-net calls should be free.

Take my comments for what they're worth, I wish you guys a hell of a lot of luck.

Cheers,

Joshua

Uh, aren't you guys on FreeSWITCH too?

Thats a great question :)

We utilize FreeSWITCH as our media server. I would never denigrate FreeSWITCH; I personally think it's an excellent media server and it handles transcoding like a boss.

I tried to clear up the misunderstanding above in my comments to be, but if you have any further questions, I'm happy to answer.

To be clear, I didn't mean to appear as though I were attacking Plivo, that's not my intention at all. I simply wanted to applaud their efforts and point out a couple ways they could improve.

Venky/Plivo Congratulations!

Venky, Hope you don't mind me asking this question (unrelated to Plivo), but it will help some of us Indians who plan to apply to YC -

How did you plan/manage to create a startup using your visa? Did you already have a Green card? Or were you on H1? Does YC encourage founders already on H1? Also how about someone on H4 visa, do you know if YC is ok with that Visa and would help found the company (if selected)?

Sorry to ask you these questions, as I haven't found any convincing answers to these nagging questions.

Wishing your team all the best!

Here is the launch post from their blog:

http://blog.plivo.com/post/13402619187/launch-of-plivo-an-op...

I like how their API is similar to Twilio. I'm interested to some of the use cases that the FreeSWITCH platform allows, especially with Skype and Google Voice.

Try Plivo Cloud. We support Google Talk as well.

> Unlike Twilio, which runs on Amazon’s cloud, Plivo runs on dedicated servers. “We know that when you run things like that on Amazon’s cloud, the voice qualities degrades, and you cannot guarantee quality of service to customers,” explains Venky.

Care to elaborate?

It is a known fact that for realtime voice encoding/decoding and mixing, virtual machines may not guarantee proper kernel timing, hence leading to issues in Voice quality.

Amazon instances are virtual in nature. Bare Metal Server work the best here.

This. I had an argument about this with the CTO of Twilio during my DevOps interview with them. Their excuse is that it works "good enough".

Can't expect much else when one of the founders comes from AWS.

Just asked them and looks like they will support webrtc too:

→can I mix it with webrtc for web calls conf or do you plan to support webrtc in the future?

plivo: Yes webrtc coming very very soon

plivo: :)

→so I could make free conf through webrtc and add people through regular phone using plivo?

→good work anyway :)

plivo: Thanks

plivo: Yes once its out

→ok, cool

I can't really tell from reading about it... is webRTC browser support happening soon? I downloaded canary last night to try some demos and had it crash 4 times in a row.

What is the volume pricing guys? 1/2 million SMS, 1 million SMS, 10M, 100M?

Our pricing starts at 0.8 cents per SMS. Thats already a price which is lower than other providers. If you have more than 1/2 Million SMS a month shoot us an email at support@plivo.com and we will help you out.

I strongly suggest you communicate your pricing as $0.008 instead of 0.8 cents. Be consistent with your units and more importantly: how people think.

Nice feedback. Will do.

As a counterpoint, I think in cents per minute regarding phone calls. I can translate $0.008 with a bit of thought but 0.8 cents is immediately obvious. Perhaps that would trip up people at Verizon[0] who think 0.99 cents is equal to 99 cents, but I think your units are fine as-is.

[0] http://verizonmath.blogspot.ca/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-d...

hmmm, food for thought!

Ok, given that we've got Plivo, Trello, and Twilio now, (and 2600hz?), can we start standardizing the CallAPI?

I think it's a net win for everyone if users don't have to worry about api lock-in....

don't forget we also have tropo. +1 to standardizing CallAPI.

Oops i meant to type tropo but wrote trello instead. Must have been all those posts about it this morning!

has anybody experience with any of this providers in europe? it looks like twilio is starting beta in UE, plivo is not available while tropo is, at least for the country available for the phone number

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