More importantly, why would you want to call your "real" numbers sequentially by default? You might prefer hitting all of them simultaneously, which is also trivial as everyone else here has mentioned.
Why is there no information on the costs or requirements? It seems the only possible way to find out is to sign up, which requires providing an email address...
Twilio has something called "Twimlets" that make setting this up very very simple. For voicemail you simply have to create a separate "twimlet" and have the resulting URL attached to the other one you use for the forwarding.
We use a twimlet for our business number. It simply plays a recording directing people to our support web page and email (phone support would be too expensive). A surprising number of places need a phone number; for example, Stripe includes it in the charge description.
Years ago one of my clients had an internal system like this... it tried numbers in sequence... but the problem was for the person who dialed in this meant very long wait times if the first person or two weren't responsive. Also we hit issues where the message would end up in someone's personal voicemail box.
Then we switched to more of a "ring all the lines at once and the first one who picked up got the call" -- much better for the person dialing in... but meant every one of our support people got distracted every time the phone rang... they hated it.
Eventually we just went back to something like ZenDesk for customers to write in to create tickets, and then expanded it to something more like what Apple does... where the user creates a request to be called back at a certain time. This is what the client still uses. It's a better system for everyone than trying to sort out incoming calls in real-time.
But now it's bad for the customer again. When they need help, they are ready to call and get their problem solved now, not at some point later in the day.
If you're Amazon/Apple/eBay and the "call me on my phone" allows 1-5 minute time windows to being called, that makes sense, but if the customer is sitting around for 10+ minutes you've already frustrated them.
Is this like DNS for a Twilio number? That's what I get. If I misunderstand could you fill out more, as if so this could be useful for contingency planning.
Looks like this is "bring your own number". It's neat, but I wouldn't trust this site to stay up under any kind of stress, which means my number would be erratically dead. If the source is available though, this is neat enough I'd consider self-hosting it.
This looks neat! BTW (shameless plug), for anyone using a Twilio number for voice and wishing to easily add SMS functionality, I created https://www.smsinbox.net last year.
I don't understand how you make money, which makes it look like there's going to be hidden costs. If I start at https://www.windsor-telecom.co.uk/memorable-business-number/... and choose, for example, a revenue generating number then go to the payment it says I get a free number that diverts to my phone for no up-front cost and zero monthly fee. So how does that work for you?
Ah, hang on the slide-away at the side says £10, whilst the "STEP 5" says £0. Looks like there might be an issue with your business logic?
I too would like to know what the thought behind this question is. They are a well established company that runs 2FA and awesome phone apis / systems for thousands of startups and large companies in a field that is high barrier of entry (less competition) and predictable profits since they meter their usage.
The only thing I can think of is if a competitor enters the space and blows them away. In which case, there is your answer, you go to whomever blew them away.
I can't imagine a lawsuits or something like that taking them down at this point. They have been around too long, it would have happened already.
I'm not saying this will be the next Dropbox, but dismissing products so offhandedly because you underestimate the average user's aversion to "writing a few lines of Javascript" is silly.
Op got downvoted a lot (and perhaps deserves it because of the tone of his post) but makes a valid point.
This is nothing like dropbox. This is barely a hello world app on the Twilio platform. I have little doubt he could write a tutorial to walk people through it in an hour two two.
This would be a good analogy if you dropbox was literally just provisioning a user and setting an FTP password. And if it was, Dropbox would hit scaling problems on almost day one.
This won't hit scaling problems because it doesn't do anything... Twilio's API has built-in API calls for all this stuff and the webhooks can (and should) be hosted on AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions for pretty much free with automatic scaling.
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
No visible privacy policy. No visible pricing information. Not good.
Twilio can do this without any help from these guys.[https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets].
[+] [-] ramya_raghu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sushid|9 years ago|reply
https://www.twilio.com/blog/2009/05/dialing-multiple-numbers...
[+] [-] Falling3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tallanvor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrollaway|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aatishnn|9 years ago|reply
- I could just create an account with nothing entered on the password field and could also login to that account that way.
- https://thisnumber.rocks/ is not being pointed to this same app.
[+] [-] cryptarch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hme|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AbeEstrada|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beejiu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mxuribe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josh_carterPDX|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philips|9 years ago|reply
The menu one in particular: https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/menu
[+] [-] scosman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbg31415|9 years ago|reply
Then we switched to more of a "ring all the lines at once and the first one who picked up got the call" -- much better for the person dialing in... but meant every one of our support people got distracted every time the phone rang... they hated it.
Eventually we just went back to something like ZenDesk for customers to write in to create tickets, and then expanded it to something more like what Apple does... where the user creates a request to be called back at a certain time. This is what the client still uses. It's a better system for everyone than trying to sort out incoming calls in real-time.
[+] [-] degenerate|9 years ago|reply
If you're Amazon/Apple/eBay and the "call me on my phone" allows 1-5 minute time windows to being called, that makes sense, but if the customer is sitting around for 10+ minutes you've already frustrated them.
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darrelld|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zhte415|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickodell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robojamison|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrollaway|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nubrimo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] napoleond|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azonliner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4tthumphrey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|9 years ago|reply
Ah, hang on the slide-away at the side says £10, whilst the "STEP 5" says £0. Looks like there might be an issue with your business logic?
[FF51 on Ubuntu.]
[+] [-] yogeshgirdhar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jalons|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2016a|9 years ago|reply
Although with that said... knowing the Twilio API and looking at this design I think someone could build this in about a day.
[+] [-] hme|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2016a|9 years ago|reply
The only thing I can think of is if a competitor enters the space and blows them away. In which case, there is your answer, you go to whomever blew them away.
I can't imagine a lawsuits or something like that taking them down at this point. They have been around too long, it would have happened already.
[+] [-] goshx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onassar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrame|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grigoryvp|9 years ago|reply
BTW, anyone interested in a tutorial? I can create one.
[+] [-] BoorishBears|9 years ago|reply
I'm not saying this will be the next Dropbox, but dismissing products so offhandedly because you underestimate the average user's aversion to "writing a few lines of Javascript" is silly.
[+] [-] throwaway2016a|9 years ago|reply
This is nothing like dropbox. This is barely a hello world app on the Twilio platform. I have little doubt he could write a tutorial to walk people through it in an hour two two.
This would be a good analogy if you dropbox was literally just provisioning a user and setting an FTP password. And if it was, Dropbox would hit scaling problems on almost day one.
This won't hit scaling problems because it doesn't do anything... Twilio's API has built-in API calls for all this stuff and the webhooks can (and should) be hosted on AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions for pretty much free with automatic scaling.
[+] [-] finid|9 years ago|reply