Hacker News Reader

Comment by dr_ | Hacker News Reader

It's a great idea. Only thing is that the person who agrees to develop it further has to realize they will be assuming the twilio fees for all your existing customers as well, which would be $5 for each new teacher, plus $2 a month per teacher - assuming a large number of them are starting with the free service.

View on HN

If someone wants to take this on, but defer the billing for the Twilio usage to the end user, this would make a great candidate for Twilio Connect (http://www.twilio.com/api/connect)

Yeah, I agree it's a great idea - but there are some unanswered questions.

What are the monthly expenses?

Sorry, I don't know much about twilio. Why is it so high? I thought it was $1/month for a number, plus 1c per text (sent or received).

I'm not sure you would need 1 number per teacher anyway. All you would need is 1 number, assuming a 1:N relationship between students and teachers. If there were 10 1:N relationships between students and teachers (some students had 10 teachers in the system), you'd just need 10 numbers.

But like I said, I've just scanned the front page of Twilio. Don't rely on what I've said.

1 cent a text - he offers 500 free texts to start and 200 a month free as well. i'm assuming those will all get used. Read the FAQ.

OK, so that's up to $7 signup (including invite bonus) plus $2 a month. I'd hope that most will not use it so much, and many who do would sign up. Otherwise, it would be time to prune the free quota.

I definitely think the free quota should be pruned. It's also worth considering NOT using a fremium model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com