Option #3: Somebody does OpenVBX as a service with predictable billing. They get to take on the marketing and support burdens of dealing with the $9 a month subscribers, and the fact that per-user usage (and hence per-user charges) is all over the map gets concealed by the Plans page. That company pays Twilio a few hundred or thousand bucks a month, in whatever fashion makes sense for their accounting practices.
I considered doing this as my Twilio app, prior to OpenVBX actually existing, but the field was crazy-crowded and I figured the idea appeals disproportionately to cheapskates and frauds. You get to pick your customers. Non-technical ladies who actually pay money for things, I choose you!
But would Twilio really be the right choice to offer this kind of service? I know they make your life easier but this could be done elsewhere for much, much cheaper.
On that note, have you thought about a switch of service in the future for your Appointment Reminder service? I'm sure it's nice to not have certain problems they take care of at this stage but down the road you could cut your costs down to a third (or less) of Twilio.
(I ask because I'm contemplating some ideas that could make use of telephony services and I respect your opinion.)
On that note, have you thought about a switch of service in the future for your Appointment Reminder service?
I will probably not be switching. I am fortunate to be in industries where costs are rounding error next to traditional ones, and time spent optimizing for costs has never made sense next to the marginal revenue I could get by taking the same time and putting it to use marketing, engineering, or marketeering. (The exception is advertising costs, because optimizing for those has superscalar returns due to how AdWords works.)
I don't have data yet for Appointment Reminder, obviously, but I expect that Twilio will consume a fairly small portion of my revenue. I'm ecstatic to give that to them in return for getting to use a programming paradigm that I'm very familiar with and have automatic tight integration between the phone and web parts of my offering. (See my blog later for examples of what you can do with that for UX. It is pretty amazing.)
This is similar to why I pay for Slicehost when there are cheaper offerings elsewhere, instantly: it works well and respects my time.
As always, I'm open to the possibility of changing when (not if) reality whacks me upside the head and tells me that everything I know is wrong, but I rather strongly suspect that "Twilio will turn out to be pretty cheap" is not the hypothesis that is a source of risk for my business.
I considered doing this as my Twilio app, prior to OpenVBX actually existing, but the field was crazy-crowded and I figured the idea appeals disproportionately to cheapskates and frauds. You get to pick your customers. Non-technical ladies who actually pay money for things, I choose you!