Ben, this is a great tutorial. I am a Rails developer and I've been planning to build a project using the Twilio video API. I had no idea that there was competition in the space.
I'm a little bit fuzzy on whether you're just a Vonage keener or if this is sponsored content. Luckily, the quality of the material is good enough that I'm not fazed either way, I'm just curious as to how this came about. For example, if you're not affiliated with Vonage, how did you make the decision to use the Vonage API over Twilio, which would seem to be the established choice?
For the Vonage folks who I have a small hunch are reading this, I can say that this looks like an excellent product but I had some gripes getting rolling. I felt like the pricing structure was a bit hidden, and once I found it, well, frankly you should just cut to the chase and make it simple to compare your fee structure to Twilio's. For a lot of devs, that is one of the primary dimensions upon which the CTO will make a decision so make it easier for us to cheerlead for you.
Money aside, the best thing you could do to get us in fighting shape to evangelize for a newcomer when there's an incumbent is present the competitive graph and be really transparent where you're at. Is Twilio able to do something slightly better? Give them the point. Do you have features they don't have? You get the point. Is something coming soon but not quite ready for prime time? Give us some dates so we can plan.
It seems, after basic examination, that you're similar... but there's still limits to what Twilio can do. For example, Twilio breaks their video offerings into: 1:1, small groups of 2-4 and large groups up to 50. They don't appear to have a broadcast option beyond 50 people. They also give by-the-minute price breakdowns for each of these tiers, on a per-person basis. This gives us the ability to make realistic estimates... 10 people for an hour is $0.06 or $0.30 or whatever it works out to be.
I think I read somewhere that you folks can broadcast up to 5000 people. That's amazing. Brag about it, and tell us how much it'll cost our clients to use it.
Finally: when does the next part come out? Please keep it super vanilla in terms of JS. I'm a Stimulus user myself; seeing more and more tutorial written for React is a huge drag and it will seem unfortunate when we look back in a few short years.
Nice to hear from you! I work for Vonage and I am lucky enough to get paid to build fun projects, especially ones that make me look like a cool dad and give my son a somewhat decent birthday party during the pandemic! 😂
If you are new to DEV, one of the easiest ways to figure out if a piece of content is coming from a company is to look to see if it is under a company organization. Right above the title at the top of the page, and in the right-hand navigation menu there is identifier information for what organization this content is coming from.
I appreciate the kind words. If you end up using the Vonage Video API for the product you are building please let us know how it goes. We have dedicated a channel for the Video API in our community Slack.
Thanks, and I appreciate the quick reply! Let me be the first complete stranger to wish your son a very happy birthday. :)
Right now I am in the realm of intrigued! Again, I hope that you can send some of my points/questions/suggestions regarding comparisons up the ladder. My DMs are open, as they say.
I just don't see much value in pretending like there isn't healthy competition. There's extraordinary value for Vonage, Twilio and the developers in that competition, especially in the long term. Any obfuscation or unintended failure to make it mindlessly easy to make an apples to apples comparison will likely favour the known quantity incumbent, after all.
Ben, this is a great tutorial. I am a Rails developer and I've been planning to build a project using the Twilio video API. I had no idea that there was competition in the space.
I'm a little bit fuzzy on whether you're just a Vonage keener or if this is sponsored content. Luckily, the quality of the material is good enough that I'm not fazed either way, I'm just curious as to how this came about. For example, if you're not affiliated with Vonage, how did you make the decision to use the Vonage API over Twilio, which would seem to be the established choice?
For the Vonage folks who I have a small hunch are reading this, I can say that this looks like an excellent product but I had some gripes getting rolling. I felt like the pricing structure was a bit hidden, and once I found it, well, frankly you should just cut to the chase and make it simple to compare your fee structure to Twilio's. For a lot of devs, that is one of the primary dimensions upon which the CTO will make a decision so make it easier for us to cheerlead for you.
Money aside, the best thing you could do to get us in fighting shape to evangelize for a newcomer when there's an incumbent is present the competitive graph and be really transparent where you're at. Is Twilio able to do something slightly better? Give them the point. Do you have features they don't have? You get the point. Is something coming soon but not quite ready for prime time? Give us some dates so we can plan.
It seems, after basic examination, that you're similar... but there's still limits to what Twilio can do. For example, Twilio breaks their video offerings into: 1:1, small groups of 2-4 and large groups up to 50. They don't appear to have a broadcast option beyond 50 people. They also give by-the-minute price breakdowns for each of these tiers, on a per-person basis. This gives us the ability to make realistic estimates... 10 people for an hour is $0.06 or $0.30 or whatever it works out to be.
I think I read somewhere that you folks can broadcast up to 5000 people. That's amazing. Brag about it, and tell us how much it'll cost our clients to use it.
Finally: when does the next part come out? Please keep it super vanilla in terms of JS. I'm a Stimulus user myself; seeing more and more tutorial written for React is a huge drag and it will seem unfortunate when we look back in a few short years.
Hi @leastbad ,
Nice to hear from you! I work for Vonage and I am lucky enough to get paid to build fun projects, especially ones that make me look like a cool dad and give my son a somewhat decent birthday party during the pandemic! 😂
If you are new to DEV, one of the easiest ways to figure out if a piece of content is coming from a company is to look to see if it is under a company organization. Right above the title at the top of the page, and in the right-hand navigation menu there is identifier information for what organization this content is coming from.
The second part of this series was published just now, and happy to say that it is all vanilla JS.
I appreciate the kind words. If you end up using the Vonage Video API for the product you are building please let us know how it goes. We have dedicated a channel for the Video API in our community Slack.
All the best!
Ben
Thanks, and I appreciate the quick reply! Let me be the first complete stranger to wish your son a very happy birthday. :)
Right now I am in the realm of intrigued! Again, I hope that you can send some of my points/questions/suggestions regarding comparisons up the ladder. My DMs are open, as they say.
I just don't see much value in pretending like there isn't healthy competition. There's extraordinary value for Vonage, Twilio and the developers in that competition, especially in the long term. Any obfuscation or unintended failure to make it mindlessly easy to make an apples to apples comparison will likely favour the known quantity incumbent, after all.
Well, thank you for the happy birthday message! He had a great time, which given the world we are living in, I was happy to make that happen!
The rest of your comments have been shared with others, and I appreciate your candor and the time you took to share those thoughts.