1) I wouldn't say "slightly". 2) Twilio's great at it because Danielle was employee #1 at Twilio. Marketing and evangelism are in Twilio's DNA.
Twilio is great at marketing and evangelism. Twilio is way ahead on that front. That's their DNA.
Voxeo is great at feature innovation and platform implementation. Voxeo is way ahead on that front. That's Voxeo's DNA.
Also not sure if you've seen this, but you can pick from English, French, German, and Spanish accents here: http://www.twilio.com/say
I agree with point "3" though. I use Twilio for an app which sends voice call reminders to other people. But when automatic reminder call goes to these people, it goes from a 1-877 number and many people don't pick up the phone thinking that it's a spam number. Instead if I could call from the number of an original user who sets the reminder, that would be really great.
Point "6" also seem to be great, and I'm sure Twilio will add that.
But somehow, the article coming from Tropo's evangelist is not strong enough or convincing to make a switch from Twilio to Tropo. In fact you did a good job in highlighting some of the technical differences. I think the post lacks these kinds of specifics.
There is a validation that has to be done with the number to make sure you own it, but you should be able to use it as much as you want after that first validation.
Also, I wanted to make sure I understand, what kind of specifics did you feel are lacking in Diggz post? We love to learn how to improve our product and our communication about it. If you are up for discussing it we will give you $100 on Amazon or Paypal for your time. Just email me at jtaylor at voxeo dot com.
-Jonathan (CEO Voxeo)
You said you inquired about Voxeo/Tropo but the pricing you mention above has absolutely nothing to do with Tropo.
Tropo is 100% free for development use - always.
Production Tropo pricing starts at 3 cents per minute with free second-leg (connected) calls, free voice recognition, free high-quality speech synthesis, free 24x7 support, no minimum, and no port limitations.
Prophecy IVR is a completely different service. It's intended for a different customer set, and those customers love the product.
We've got a big release coming that makes Tropo much easier to use. Entirely new documentation, sanded off some of the rough edges on features, added new ones to make some use cases simpler.
I'd love to hear about the specific road bumps that made it harder for you, it would really help us improve our simplicity. We will give you $100 on Amazon or Paypal for your time. If you're interested email jtaylor at voxeo dot com.
1. Cheaper
2. Multiple voices and accents (UK British Male & Female)
3. Use any number as caller ID.
4. Calls during development are free.
5. Recordings are a breeze
6. Voice recognition from a set of options instead of pressing digits (eg. "Say yes, no or repeat").
On the downside, I've found their system wasn't quite as easy to get going with as Twilio, but it is much more powerful.
Twilio have been more visible and active - Tropo seem slightly behind in evangelism and generally pimping their product.