Ask HN: What's the best service for phone number verification?

3 pointsakhilcacharya4 comments

Considering writing an app with phone number login using a verification system - I was considering rolling my own using Twilio (asking the user to call a number and add a code or get an SMS and enter a code), but I was wondering if there are any better solutions that work OOTB.

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For a mobile app, I developed recently, I tried the following services:

https://www.nexmo.com/product/verify/ https://getprove.com/

In terms of ease of use and reliability, I preferred Nexmo. But however, I faced issues sending sms to VOIP numbers with Nexmo.

I ended up using Twilio and Parse (it was the backend anyway) to get a verification service running. You can use this http://shamadeh.com/blog/web/mobile/twilio/parse/2014/07/31/... as a starting point!

Here is a link to Twilio Lookup https://www.twilio.com/lookup

Twilio lookup gets you details about the carrier and whether it is voice/sms enabled. Basically used to validate if you have number that enables communication. This service is not the same as the verification API the OP is talking about!

Twilio has a product specifically for the 'get a code via SMS and verify it' use case: https://www.twilio.com/authy

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