[matthewer]

Keep in mind that you can only send one message every second. That is a pretty low throttle. If your service were to take off you would probably need to switch to a bigger aggregator.

[danielle17]

To be clear, the throttle is 1 message per minute per phone number (which is $1/month), not per account.

-danielle (@twilio)

[johns]

Really? One per minute per number? That's a pretty big limitation.

Edit: I think Danielle just mistyped. From the FAQ: "Each of your Twilio SMS-enabled phone numbers can send SMS messages at a rate of 1 message per second. You can make requests to Twilio as fast as you like, and Twilio will queue the messages, releasing them at a rate of 1 message per second. It is not possible to adjust this rate."

[danielle17]

Eek yes, 1 msg per second per number... I think it's time for me to go to bed.

danielle (@twilio)

[matthewer]

Either way, imagine you need to send out 100 messages. That would be 100 seconds (or even worse 100 minutes.) Imagine if you needed to send out 1,000 or a million. Its going to be hard to build a solely SMS service around this based on that limitation. I think this is awesome if you want to add SMS alerts to your existing website or build a proof of concept, but I don't think your going to build an SMS app on top of this API.

[Vindexus]

Well if your service is sending out 100 messages in one second then you can probably afford the $1-$2/month charge to add more numbers.

[gridspy]

Especially since you are already paying $3 per minute for the 100 messages.

[oconnor0]

http://www.twilio.com/pricing-signup says that it's 3 cents/SMS - which, yes, works out to be $3 - but not because it's per minute.

[Nwallins]

The point is: you buy more phone numbers at $1/month to increase your capacity.