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Twilio launches in Europe (twilio.com)
133 points by swombat on Oct 26, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 39 comments



For values of Europe equal to: the UK, and France, Poland, Austria, Denmark, and Portugal in beta.


Can't tell whether this is snark, but I will respond as though it's not.

Obtaining phone numbers in every country is a bit of a tricky legal process. If we waited until we had all of Europe lined up it would take quite awhile and that wouldn't be very "lean" of us. What if it turns out nobody wants to buy numbers in Croatia but we spent a bunch of time trying to get numbers there?

In the end we will roll out incrementally as we bring on new carriers and forge new relationships in other countries in Europe.


It's not intended as snark. As a resident of one European country, Italy, not particularly known for its ease of doing business, dealing with what can be a fairly bureaucratic industry in the whole lot of them is Not My Idea of Fun. Launching in several and then continuing the roll out is completely sensible.

If I recall correctly, even the original iPhone was rolled out country by country, or at least groups at a time, and Apple certainly has a lot more resources than a startup.


Have you considered letting people sign up to hear news about when Twilio launches in their country? E.g., I'd love to hear when Twilio launches in Israel.


We don't currently have a form for all countries, but if you email help@twilio.com with your request for a country it gets tagged for the future and we will keep you posted. So please drop us a note, every request motivates us to work faster.


Sadly Germany is missing from the EU beta signup page (http://www.twilio.com/eu-beta-signup). Do you have any timeframe when this will change?


Agreed, the title is misleading, and should be changed to "Twillo launching in UK"


Generally the elitist UK doesn't like themselves being pushed in a corner with "the mainland" ;)


There are loads of people in Britain who don't think the UK is in Europe. ☺


Agreed


True that. Genuinely wondering whether it's investor bait.


This is great, but any chance of having a UK pricing page that's in £ (you know, the local currency we use here)?

http://www.twilio.com/uk/pricing


Personally speaking (as a UK based user of many cloud services) - I have no objection to be being priced in dollars. Amazon charges for its EU and APAC datacenters prices in dollars (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/)

And to be honest, I'd rather pay the same standard US price, rather than some inflated price where $1 suddenly equals £1.

The other thing you'll need to watch in Europe is VAT (sales taxes, currently 20% in the UK). Which if you're not including in your prices, you should mark as such.


We're working on it, for now we have to charge in dollars and we wouldn't want to have to give you something that changes every time the currency exchange rate changes.


You could just change the $ to a £, like seemingly every other bloody company ;-)


Just pick a UK price that gives you some margin, and re-evaluate once every quarter. The exchange rate doesn't change that much.


Their merchant banking setup may only allow charging in USD. It would be worse to show a price in pounds and then be billing an amount that differs.


Oh right. Then yeah, they have to keep the price in dollars.


Charging in Dollars is /precisely/ something that changes every time the exchange rate moves.

It also makes you look like: A - amateurs B - you don't understand or care about markets outside the US


When a key part of the offering is "simple pricing," having rates that are constantly shifting complicates things for customers, Sales, etc.

And changing pricing up is hard. Look at what happened to Netflix on the streaming/dvd plans.


This is one of the best "What the hell does this thing do" pages I've seen. I wish every business had one like that for their products:

http://www.twilio.com/api

Takes about 4 seconds to explain what their service does. Wonderful.


Great when it will have SMS support.

Since most of the people I know have unlimited SMS it opens the possibility to many services. Including "extending" Siri.


SMS is currently in private beta, you can request access here: http://www.twilio.com/pricing

Just click the "let me know when its ready" link and enter your email address


Damn, got all excited about this until I noticed the no-SMS in the UK bit.


Indeed, launching without SMS is really frustrating as this is what most people will be interested in


Great guys, welcome to this side of the pond!

Does this mean that outbound rates to EU countries (e.g. Holland) will drop sometime soon?


Does this mean Patio11 needs a UK salesperson for appointmentreminder.org now? :-)


I plead terminal stupidity on this, but it actually requires code changes to AR in about ~12 places to support a new country at the moment, so I can't just flip a switch. That said, UK support should be out by the end of November.


Cool! Good luck. Let me know if you need any local advice.


Great stuff, looking forward to meeting some Twilio folks at the Silicon Milkroundabout this Sunday.


Apart from a Developer Evangelist... what other roles will you be hiring for in London?


we're looking for sales people too.


Quick workaround: buy a number on Skype (or any other international service) and forward it to your Twilio number.


Any chance of including video chat (not just voice) in future?


What is twilio?


Just looked the other way for a tiny moment and Europe is equalled with the UK.

But perhaps from 501 Folsom St. Third Floor San Francisco California 94105 Europe looks so awfully far away, that one can only see the UK.


Twilio is GA in the UK today, we have 5 more countries in Europe in beta today, and 11 more announced to go into beta in the coming weeks leading into the end of 2011... with the rest of Europe to open. No geography lessons, no shenanigans.


I stand by my comment. When you launch in the UK you should write "Twilio Launches in UK instead of "Twilio Launches in Europe".

Same as for "Twilio Launches in Chile" instead of "Twilio Launches in America" when you launch in Chile.


I forgot the HN rule: Never say anything bad about HN darlings. Double bad: Never say anything bad about the US. Triple bad: Complain about HN.




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