Free Plivo Developer Accounts for Life

http://blog.plivo.com/post/45362689649/free-plivo-developer-accounts-for-life

by bevenky • 13 years ago

37 27 13 years ago

blog.plivo.com

ad93611• 13 years ago

Why can't a developer buy a plivo number? I would have been nice to have that as well.

bevenky5• 13 years ago

Well, Phone numbers have a carrier cost. Hence we have tried to make this win-win. We give you the credits which allows you to build most of the needed apps on the cloud.

For the Phone numbers, You can still bring your own phone numbers from free services like ipkall.com and virtualphoneline.com

There are a bunch of more services like these if you google around. :)

Plivo will work with any of these around the globe.

dm2• 13 years ago

How does Google give out Google Voice phone numbers for free? Are they accepting a loss every time someone registers a new number?

aoprisan2• 13 years ago

it's misleading to offer this free credit but have such a huge exclusion on what you can do with it.. Twilio used to have a $20 credit for all new accounts without restrictions, but now that the product matured, it's no more. if you expect people to start building things on your platform and show them off, give them real credit without the *fine print.

anemitz• 13 years ago

One of the largest benefits for us was the ability to rent numbers through the API. Since developer accounts can't rent real numbers will you be renting out some sort of internal numbers? Not allowing any numbers to be rented seems like an oversight since I'd imagine a lot of apps use (and want to test) this type of functionality.

vyrotek• 13 years ago

I'm actually in the middle of evaluating Twilio and Tropo for a client. How does this compare?

bevenky5• 13 years ago

Well, I am not the one to comment on them but if you are considering them you will want to consider Plivo as well…

Drop us a note at hello@plivo.com and we will help you with it!

LogicX• 13 years ago

We do international SMS and use smsglobal and tropo.

Sujan• 13 years ago

"Oops, Sorry there's been an error. We are digging into it." on signup :( Maybe the + I used in the email address?

superchink• 13 years ago

What if I've previously signed up for an account? Is there a way to ‘convert’ my account to a developer account and leverage this new offering?

bevenky5• 13 years ago

Sure. Shoot us your username over our live chat and we will get this done :)

winestock• 13 years ago

I hate it when a company weblog doesn't have a prominent link to the home site. Sure, I can edit the URL bar, but it's good to make things more convenient to the user.

http://www.plivo.com/

UPDATE: As noted in the next comment, it's been fixed. Thanks!

ianhawes2• 13 years ago

The pricing is outrageous compared to Twilio. 8 cents per text message?

bevenky5• 13 years ago

Not sure where you saw 8 cents. Its actually 0.8 cents and once you start scaling higher it gets cheaper.

http://plivo.com/pricing/

ianhawes2• 13 years ago

Whoops! Didn't see that :)

To be fair, I didn't see the pricing page at all. I did see the 0.8c on the Buy Number page. I suppose 0.8c is accurate, but you'd probably be better off putting $0.008 instead.

arafalov• 13 years ago

What can you actually use the credits for? You can't pay for incoming calls/sms or outgoing calls/sms. That leaves IP calls and transcription costs. Is that it? Or am I missing something.

And if I do bring my own phone number, what do I still pay for to Plivo?

rachelmaesmith• 13 years ago

The free developer account allows you to do more than just IP calls.

You can create Plivo endpoints to make calls on a multitude of clients -> Browsers (using our Web SDK), iOS, Android, any Soft phone that runs SIP, and any hardware phone that runs SIP like Polycom or Cisco.

When you bring in your own numbers, you will not be charged. Additionally, when you make calls on these numbers, the balance is taken from the credits on the free developer account.

josh2600• 13 years ago

Disclaimer: I work at 2600hz, the open-source cloud telecom company.

I don't understand what the credit is for... Is it for SIP end points to SIP endpoint calls, or to help offset the plivo tariff on external carriers? If you can't use the money to buy DIDs or make calls or send SMS, what can you do with it?

Genuinely curious.

Free Plivo Developer Accounts for Life

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