Calling Vault - a private Google Voice (sort of)

https://callingvault.com/

by cpenner461 • 13 years ago

34 27 13 years ago

callingvault.com

aaronpk• 13 years ago

> "Calling Vault - a private Google Voice (sort of?) (callingvault.com)"

Is this somehow implying that Google Voice is public?

codev• 13 years ago

It's similar to what Gruber posted on daringfireball:

"Great new service, sort of like Google Voice but private."

I guess implying that Google have access to your phone calls and this company isn't going to.

mikeash• 13 years ago

Yeah, I couldn't figure out what Gruber meant by that. I guess it means that it's like Google Voice, except you have to pay for it, and it's not run by a big company that you can count on to stay in business for a long time.

r00fus• 13 years ago

More importantly, your voicemails are being used to process speech-text (Google's transcription service), and train Google's speech recognition algorithm.

fratis3• 13 years ago

(Frank here, one of the co-founders of CallingVault.)

'Privacy' in the context of our service means two things, but in the comparison to GV, it really means that we'll never scrape your texts or voicemails for ad targeting or use your activity to build a profile of who you are.

It also means – and we share this with GV – that you can keep your personal number private by giving out your CallingVault number instead.

Zikes• 13 years ago

No plans offering unlimited texts? Isn't that a little unusual for a phone service?

testimoney2• 13 years ago

Expensive and not unlimited :(

jefe78• 13 years ago

Seems sketchy that I can't view the available numbers before signing up. I almost signed up but without that information, I was skeptical and opted not to continue.

Sayter• 13 years ago

It doesn't seem to be clear beforehand from "you'll be able to choose from the following area codes" whether you can pick the full number (vanity number), or just the area code and having the rest of the number being randomly assigned (similar to how telecoms usually give numbers).

I also almost signed up, but decided against it over the lack of clarity.

bdc• 13 years ago

$39 for 100 minutes - that comes out to 39 cents a minute. Even the cheapest you can buy minutes ($22 for 1000, or 2.2 cents/minute) is more expensive than comparable web-based services. Is there anything that this actually does better than normal, in exchange for those prices?

fratis3• 13 years ago

Frank here – one of the co-founders of CallingVault. Here's how we look at it:

We wanted to charge the lowest price possible for a CallingVault line, so we made text and minute purchasing a la carte. This way, you get the line (including unlimited voicemail) for $3.25/month and you add only the texts and minutes that you need. We think our rates on texts and calls (as low as 1¢/txt and 2.2¢/min) are competitive.

We're always looking to get our prices as low as possible without jeopardizing the sustainability of our business (which means never showing ads, never selling customer data in any way, and ensuring that we can be around for the long haul to provide the kind of support we do now) and our goal is to be as transparent as possible (except with our customers' information). Can you point me to other services that charge less?

parfe• 13 years ago

Can I port an existing number?

Will the I be able to receive from SMS shortcodes?

What if I want more than one number? Your CallingVault account is linked to your email address, and each account gets one number. If you'd like more than one number, simply sign up with multiple email addresses.

That is less than optimal. Any plans on allowing more than one number per account? Or would I need to juggle multiple emails?

edit: And it looks like a useful feature is scheduled availability but I'm inferring that from the twitter quote: “I freelance in the fashion industry, and CallingVault keeps me in touch with clients on my schedule. Not theirs.”

Do you provide a way to schedule availability hours/hours of operation?

caseysoftware• 13 years ago

Oddly enough, I built something similar with Twilio a couple weeks ago: https://github.com/caseysoftware/upgrading-google-voice-with...

There are hours of operation and then white/black lists managed by SMS. I have a few other features in mind that I haven't gotten to yet.

Disclosure: I am a Twilio employee but started this project as a proof of concept on my own.

sylvainww• 13 years ago

It looks like a simple to use product. Does it cost minutes for call forwarding (when someone calls me?)

fratis3• 13 years ago

Minutes are used for call forwarding and outgoing calls, yes. :) Thanks for the question. We're adding it to our FAQ shortly.

hnwh• 13 years ago

what do I get beyond google voice for these prices?

loudwalrus• 13 years ago

Yep. That was my question off the bat. (That and what did Gruber mean by "private"). I think the TL;DR is "they don't sell your information to advertisers/use your call information to market to you". And perhaps some ease of use advantages, especially for iOS users.

At first, that didn't seem appealing to me. I've been a GV user since way back in the GrandCentral days. But, frankly, it is an essential service for me. And you know what they say, "If you aren't the [paying] customer, then you are the product." It would be nice to have actual customer support and actual accountability. GV is wonderful, but it's also a complete support black hole.

Adaptive• 13 years ago

"Privacy" is not the problem set I'd pick to compete on in this space unless you are going full crypto like Silent Circle.

Instead, I'd focus on GV's actual weak points (instead of some invasion of privacy suggestion which ends up sounding like FUD, usually).

Weak points like no real team set up, no good multi-number international support, etc. There is a huge laundry list of things you could be going after.

Instead, this looks like less of a service for more money.

Offered in the spirit of constructive criticism. I use GV all day every day and am very happy with it, but it has a several glaring flaws (privacy isn't one of them as far as I'm concerned). The next step up to a full service vpbx system is a HUGE leap in terms of cost and complexity. The gap between those two is wide open.

benburton• 13 years ago

I have no idea why I would pay for this over the free, amazing Google service I already have. I don't care that an algorithm scrapes my data, and I love that I get email transcriptions of voicemails. Someone enlighten me.

Edit: Actually, the only thing I can think of that Google Voice doesn't do for me is international text messages.

veidr• 13 years ago

Or allow you to forward your number to an international number when you are out of the country.

But I checked, this doesn't do that either.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

A bit more than I'd want to pay for this.

I like the idea of Google Voice competitors though because while I use and like Google Voice a lot, the service seems pretty much stagnant these days. Like it works okay, but Google doesn't seem to be investing much into it in terms of adding new features or fixing long-standing problems.

itakee• 13 years ago

"It is possible that we may need to disclose Personal Information, profile information and/or information about your activities as an CallingVault user when required by subpoena or other legal process, or if CallingVault has a good faith belief that disclosure is necessary:" -TOS

Doesn't seem very private to me

ebtalley• 13 years ago

well, it does answer my internal question of whether I could find a consumer facing service that would replace GV in case that service goes down the tubes.

GV has become my defacto number these days. It would be tough to lose that functionality.

josh2600• 13 years ago

If you guys want this for free you can install our stack using our GITHUB or Chef Scripts and it can do all of this + a heck of a lot more.

If this is too much work and you want someone to host this for you, you can sign up for our beta at http://invite.kazoo.io. We closed the beta down at 300 or so folks but we're going to be opening it up and adding a lot of new invites in the next couple weeks.

I just don't think this is a service people should have to pay for and before anyone jumps down my throat, yes we charge for calls, but you can bring your own carriers so you don't actually have to pay us anything if you have 5 devices or less on our infrastructure.

Source: I'm the Marketing/Community guy at 2600hz.com, the Open-source Cloud Telecom company.

Wiki Chef Solo link: https://2600hz.atlassian.net/wiki/display/docs/Deploying+Kaz...

The other part that kills me is the cost structures. 100 minutes for $40 is a tad high. We charge $.0099 per minute, so $40 would buy you over 4000 minutes...

If somebody from CallingVault wants to reach out to me, I think we should chat because there's clearly a lot of design effort here, I just think that something has to be wrong on the infrastructure side. I'd honestly love to talk about what this might look like as an Enterprise product because I see more value there. But I digress...

samirahmed• 13 years ago

was anybody else put off by the fact that it asked for money before showing you the numbers you could choose from?

Offering a proxy number like GV, means that you want to be able to choose the number you want (area code, easy to remember, similar to your current one).

perhaps this is something that only bothered me.

firefoxman1• 13 years ago

Hey, looks like you guys are getting some flak for the prices. Personally I doubt I'll use the service, but I just have to compliment you on the site. It's gorgeous. Readable, clean, great logo, just overall beautiful. Nice work.

Calling Vault - a private Google Voice (sort of)

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